As expected, this was a refreshing beginning to the Vic Opera 2017 season. Vic Opera can be relied upon to come up with original, fresh offerings, leaving traditional grand opera to other companies. So one goes to a Vic Opera performance with open ears and an open mind.

The title comes from a play, written close to Shakespeare’s time: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, by John Ford, written in 1633. As with the two other productions of hers I’ve seen (Die Sieben Todsunden, Brecht/ Weill and Music of Berlin – with Barry Humphries), Meow Meow was the centre-piece. The production probably couldn’t have come off without her. According to the program notes, director/ writer Cameron Menzies was inspired by working with Meow Meow on the Brech/Weill production and this led to the idea of a show about the history of prostitution. He worked on this concept with Richard Mills…

This first novel of Zoe Morrison has helped me to pursue my interest in the challenges faced by women artists in the first half of the 20^th century – the challenges of being assumed to be second-rate compared to men, of believing that home-making should have priority over piano practice, of being dependent on men for money. Recently I’ve been interested in the lives of Australian pianists from that time: Margaret Sutherland and Eileen Joyce. Although these women weathered considerable difficulties, they had a better time than the fictitious Alice Murray in Zoe Morrison’s book.

Alice grew up on an orange orchard somewhere near Mildura. A difficult childhood was on the cards, with isolation, poverty and her parents’ deteriorating marriage. But Alice’s mother recognised that her young daughter was a gifted pianist and (finding the money somehow) sent her off to boarding school in England.

Alice would have been…

Look at him working. The way he smiles at every customer. He’s impeccable. But when he goes to his room at the back, at the side of the kitchen, the smile is gone. He sips clear liquor from a teacup, swears under his breath, and watches everything through the small glass in the door. When he sees a new customer, he’s out to greet them, bounding over, showing them to a table. Then as he bows slightly, moving away, he nods to a waiter to bring menus, water. He returns to his room, sits down, stares through the glass, sips at the liquor. No one would ever guess. He seems impeccable.

The central idea for this short novel is from Hamlet: ‘Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams.’ The story is narrated (soliloquized) by a foetus Hamlet, whose mother is Trudy (as in Gertrude) and her lover is Claude (as in Claudius). The foetus  eavesdrops on the plot of the lovers to do away with the father (a poet), so that the two can be together without his intrusion.  It’s a clever idea. I’m sure that McEwan did his usual painstaking research so that the cramped environment from which the foetus narrates the story is accurate. Although, how a foetus could have any brain cells left after the huge amount of alcohol (including spirits) consumed by his mother, I don’t know. The whole thing is referenced, perhaps too nicely, to the play – the…