Weimar on Walsh Bay
Last night was supposed to be dinner with friends, but out of nowhere, two free tickets to the Sydney Festival’s production of The Black Rider turned up. At first it appeared they’d go begging, as one after another combination of us in attendance was proposed to take the seats, all of us more intent on a leisurely meal after our working day than on three hours in the theatre, despite the production’s reputation, one with which I have a bit of a history. Some years back, The Black Rider was the big draw at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival. Although no big names were actually performing, unlike the Sydney event’s early promise of Marianne Faithful, who withdrew due to illness well before the start, I was keen to go. Prevented, by one thing or another, I convinced a friend to take my ticket. She hated it, wouldn’t talk about it, and pretty much never spoke to me again. It must have been terrific, was all I could figure. So, it seems that once again, I had to come to Australia for fate to catch up with me, because after some negotiations over the phone, I ended up in a splendid orchestra seat.

The music, by Tom Waits, I’ve heard on CD, and although it was played well and sung with verve, I do think I prefer still that canned version overall. Still, we are talking about Robert Wilson at the acme of his German abstract expressionist fascination, so the combination of that with the Waits songs and libretto by William S. Burroughs, is a big draw, and in the end quite a successful theatrical collaboration. Wilson’s work isn’t going to show up on Broadway any time soon, but wouldn’t be entirely out of place. I wonder, however, what audience he has in mind with these productions, which, in this case, and in his collaboration with Lou Reed, The Raven, look like a melding of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Cabaret, and very Weimar in sensibility overall. Do younger audience members get the references, or do they think it’s all very new and hip? For those of us over, say, 30, we’re perhaps too familiar with the content, whether the look or even so far as the content itself, in this instance drawn from a German folktale.

I enjoyed it; I’m glad I finally got to see it; Marianne Faithful would have been terrific in the role of the Devil, so I’m sorry she got sick; and despite a later night than I’d been prepared for, it was a terrific night overall.