Amyl and the Sniffers at Sidney Myer Music Bowl; Leon Bridges at Sidney Myer Music Bowl; Thirty-Six at fortyfivedownstairs; Coded at Midsumma

MUSIC
Leon Bridges | The Leon Tour ★★★★
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, January 23

The Sidney Myer Music Bowl stadium is packed, with some fans opting to stand in the aisles and in front of the stage to dance freely.

Leon Bridges’ seven-piece band, composed of keys, guitar, drums and percussion, start playing the introductory bars to When a Man Cries off his latest album, Leon. The American singer-songwriter casually strolls on and, basking in the glow of the spotlights, his soulful dulcet tones fill the stadium as he starts to sing: “Why I gotta see them thangs / that hurt my heart?”

This is the sixth time the Grammy-winning Atlanta-born, Texas-raised performer has visited Australia, and he will be finishing up his 2025 national tour at A Day on the Green in Geelong on the weekend.

His music transcends genre, interweaving country, R’n’B, gospel, rock and soul – a nod to his southern roots.

Leon is a tribute to both his hometown of Fort Worth and his family, according to a recent interview, with the artist saying, “I love just honouring my family in the music”. Watching the seasoned entertainer now, it’s difficult to believe his career started when he was working as a dishwasher, attempting to get discovered at open-mic nights.

Bridges, whose birth name is Todd Michael Bridges, engages in minimal conversation between songs, letting his music speak for itself.

From time to time, he incorporates messages for the crowd into the lyrics of his songs. During That’s What I Love, he declares smoothly without skipping a beat, “You know what else I love? I love Melbourne, I love you guys”.

“Got any dancers in the house tonight?” he asks as he starts playing upbeat track You Don’t Know off his second album, Good Thing. His body moves to the rhythm as he holds the mic, the fringed tassels on his jacket moving along with him.

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Occasionally, Bridges moves from one song to another without pausing. He transitions seamlessly from the country vibes of Mariella, a track with frequent collaborators and fellow Texas act Khruangbin, to the R’n’B tones of Steam off third album Gold-Diggers Sound.

An equivocal highlight is his rendition of River, a song featured in the soundtrack of hit TV show Big Little Lies. He slows the gospel ballad down even further, creating stillness by drawing out every note. The harmonies from the backing vocals lift the crowds to the heavens, mesmerising them.

Romancing the crowd for almost 1½ hours, Bridges provides the perfect antidote to warm up a chilly, dreary Melbourne summer night.
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar

THEATRE | MIDSUMMA
Thirty-Six ★★★★
By Jo Clifford and Bayley Turner, fortyfiveownstairs, until February 2

Inequalities scream at our eyes on the journey of life. They seem far more absurd when you consider the destination. In death, all are equal, and although Thirty-Six contains an elaborate memento mori, it’s also a powerful testament to the lived experience of two trans artists, transfigured through theatrical craft into an illuminating and deeply moving piece of personal, philosophical and political performance.

Bayley Turner has joined forces with Jo Clifford – the pioneering trans performer from the UK, now in her 70s, who boldly reimagined the Messiah as a transwoman in The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven.

This one is an autobiographical performance – with Turner live onstage and Clifford in voiceover – spliced with meditations on grief and ageing; eulogies for the lost; a fearless exploration of the complexities of transitioning; and an embodiment of strength and solidarity in the face of transphobia.

If trans people have been uniquely buffeted by recent so-called “culture wars”, this show comes from a place of earned tranquillity. It’s delivered from the eye of the storm.

Turner’s reflections proceed from the morbid though unverifiable premise that the average life expectancy for transwomen is 36. At 35, her relationship to death, and its implications for living a good life, seem pressing.

Death appears in fascinating guises. Parents who think their son or daughter “has died” upon transition. Or Turner and Clifford fantasising about their own funerals as teens – one denuded of pomp and ceremony, one with all the bells and whistles – intuiting an emotional truth realised much later: “If you cannot be who you know you are, you might as well be dead.”

There are tales of how people they’ve known face death: unsurprisingly, the bigoted and frightened have a worse time of it than those who are accepting and full of love.

Turner delivers emotionally intelligent observations with charisma, irreverence and a kind of serene intensity that can swell into turbulence at conflicted memories or rage at injustice.

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Director Kitan Petkovski guides the embodied, essayistic quality of the piece with sensitivity.

Some brilliant design elements add a sophisticated visual and sonic language to the script, from close-up video (celebrating an ageing body up close, among other things) to the spectral presence of singer Alexandra Amerides behind a translucent scrim. Amerides has a haunting voice, raised in elegy, and at points the show blurs vocal timbre, through electronic manipulation, across any preconceived gender binary.

We’re reminded in Thirty-Six that gender-diverse people have been regarded in some cultures and historical periods as sacred – sometimes possessed of powers of insight others did not possess. What happened? How can we transition into a fairer world? You’ll confront both questions in this beautiful and enlightening piece.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

DANCE
Coded: A Night of Queer Storytelling ★★
Abbotsford Convent, until January 25

Queer storytelling thrives on breaking codes: hacking rigid systems of meaning and opening new narrative possibilities for the exploration of identity and desire and all things unconventional and fluid.

The risk, of course, is formlessness, a lack of structure that alienates rather than intrigues. Subverting narrative conventions can be liberating, but the results can also be rather ponderous.

This program of three short works by choreographer Amelia Jean O’Leary, presented as part of the Midsumma Festival, doesn’t entirely avoid the trap of vagueness. Its abstract, pensive style is difficult to engage despite some strong imagery.

The first piece, however, a duet, is relatively effective, with a strong narrative line and distinctive style. Vintage-inspired noir costumes establish a sharp aesthetic, while clear, communicative gestures ground the performance and hold our attention.

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An extended note in the program reveals this vignette as a Gamilaroi story of two emu sisters. One is shunned by her community and takes revenge by lighting fires. The interpretive key adds depth to the piece’s more evocative movements, such as the final image of the sisters together, arms raised, suffused in a red glow.

The second piece, a trio in white, is more obscure. It has a watery theme but suffers, perhaps from too much ebb and flow, too much drifting and fluttering. And the three performers too often seem to be in separate worlds.

The final group piece, featuring six sultry cowgirls in T-shirts and underwear, explores desire and despondency but also struggles to cohere. Even with program notes, these last two pieces are hard to follow and even harder to enjoy, leaving the audience adrift.

O’Leary’s work strives to create space between personal and oppositional subjectivities, between her identity as a queer artist and First Nations storyteller. Here, while she aims to provoke and contest, the elusiveness of the work proves too challenging.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

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