Updated ,first published
MUSIC
Basement Jaxx
★★★★½
Sydney Opera House forecourt, March 5
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
Experience an electronic music show nowadays – live or otherwise – and what you’re in for is usually an uninspired redux of DJ worship. One or two artists behind the decks, usually poker-faced white dudes, getting their glory.
It’s such an incongruous disconnect from the genre’s origins. To their absolute credit, in their first live show in Australia in 15 years, pioneering British duo Basement Jaxx puts the communal trip ahead of their ego trip, while honouring the black, shining provenance of the kind of music they love. Over 70-odd minutes of a blessedly warm night, with an almost full moon winking down, they orchestrate a cosmically euphoric, Afrofuturist-inspired carnival on the Sydney Opera House steps.
Felix Buxton (manning gear tucked inside a centre hole on the sloped stage) and Simon Ratcliffe (on guitar) may be the drivers of the experience, but for most part they’re not even the main act. Kicking off with the imperiously self-affirming anthem Good Luck, guests Phebe Edwards, Vula Malinga and Jai Amore dominate with their vocals, energy and otherworldly disco-royal attire. Picture a chic silver Lycra dress with an inflatable hem, another with fierce metal spikes, floating radium-green visors, pearlescent tunics, and an astro-tulle skirt under a hip-as-hell varsity jacket.
Flanked by two massive drum kits, with a trumpeter in the mix, we’re sent on an explosively creative journey through a cross-cultural miscellany of boisterous sonic textures. Alongside fusion house-y hip-swingers and bodacious hits like Red Alert and Do Your Thing, there are moments given over to baroque grandiosity via 17th century composer Handel, a smatter of hard techno, and even a little opera, with a Björk and Yves Tumor cover of ROSALÍA’s Berghain our penultimate track.
This is music for unabashed expression, where unity is found in shared, propulsively joyous movement. Contemporary dancers, acrobats and ballet dancers lead the way, soaring with ferocious grace across that tilted stage. There’s also a woman inside an enormous diaphanous flower that languidly blossoms to the beat, and a gorilla gang ambush (naturally) for the Where’s Your Head At closer, which rampages into a drum and bass remix. Screen visuals throughout simulate a ‘surfing the rainbow’ acid wave, and include grey aliens and pyramids on turbo jets. (Notable: Buxton’s encounter with a UFO partly inspired their most recent album Junto, released in 2014. A new Jaxx album is cooking for a 2026 release.)
It’s wildly eclectic, bonkers even. But it sure makes for an unforgettable night.
THEATRE
Afterglow
★★½
Eternity Playhouse, March 3
Until March 22
Reviewed by JOYCE MORGAN
There’s no place to hide in this gay ménage à trois. Its three characters are exposed emotionally and, for much of the piece, literally.
Clothes are shed along with defences in this exploration of intimacy, desire, jealousy and betrayal.
Three naked, athletic, entangled figures – backlit behind a screen – writhe in ecstasy as the play opens.
Alex (Julian Curtis) and Josh (Olympic diver Matthew Mitcham) are an affluent 30-something married couple in Manhattan, who have taken a handsome young masseur, Darius (Matthew Predny), into their bed.
Alex and Josh have an open relationship, which has worked fine during their nine-year marriage and they’re now poised to become parents to a surrogate child.
What begins as a light-hearted three-way frolic with a piece of eye candy soon tests the boundaries of the couple’s relationship. Josh falls for Darius and Alex feels threatened. The eternal triangle.
Polyamory and open marriage – queer or straight – are not subjects I’ve seen explored on stage. So a work that promises to consider such taboos is intriguing.
Yet having established this unconventional relationship, the trajectory of S. Asher Gelman’s 2017 play is conventional, indeed.
Much of the play, which Gelman also directs and choreographs, unfolds through movement. Scene changes are tightly choreographed, as the actors remain in character while shifting elements of the set around.
The dialogue is staccato and largely superficial. A rare exception is Alex recalling his childhood excitement when his mother drove him from their rural home to gaze at glittering New York City, even if they could only afford to stay in Jersey City.
Workaholic Alex and emotionally demanding Josh are so self- absorbed it’s difficult to care about them. Darius is clear-eyed and a more sympathetic character. He yearns for a committed relationship and knows his entanglement with the pair works against that.
Several elements of the play feel undercooked, especially the class difference. Josh has come from money, Alex has not. Nor has Darius, who struggles to pay the rent. Yet, the impact of Josh’s entitlement is not explored.
Also underdeveloped is the couple’s impending parenthood. The unborn child feels little more than an opportunity to invent amusing baby names. As Josh and Alex’s relationship unravels, the imminent arrival is effectively forgotten. There’s no sense of who will be left holding this baby.
Ann Beyersdorfer’s sleek black set is often flooded with gold and purple tones (lighting Jamie Roderick). Mirrors and a central shower create a voyeuristic feel. Lauren Peters’ costumes – when the characters actually wear any – are mostly casual, contemporary streetwear.
As Alex, Curtis is cool and restrained, the mirror opposite of Mitcham’s needy Josh. Predny brings vulnerability and honesty to Darius and a self-awareness that the other two characters lack.
All three work hard, dare I say, to put flesh on their characters, but there’s no hiding the banality of the script.
“The heart wants what the heart wants,” says Josh. It feels a glib platitude.
Afterglow burns with physicality, but its promising premise fizzles to a predictable end.
Joyce Morgan is a theatre critic for The Sydney Morning Herald. She is a former arts editor and writer of the SMH and also an author.Connect via X.
