SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE: MAGNIFIQUE

Back in 2019, Little Eggs Collective presented Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of The Ancient Mariner as a theatrical piece. It was a triumph.

Now this company is presenting a musical piece, Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz, as a theatrical experience, and it too, is a resounding triumph.

Not musical theatre but theatre from music. This is not the Hayes crowd, but the haze crowd.

Taking Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantistique as a springboard, Little Eggs Collective re imagine it is a romantic epic with sinister overtones and undertones of subordination, a latex and leather symphony that revels in fascination, obsession, and fetish, a fishnet fantasia.

Back in the 1800s, the music was a revelation, Berlioz creating the era equivalent of “house”. The company illustrate this by creating a sound and light dance space redolent of Biarritz.

Symphonie Fantistique may be the base from which this thrilling theatre springs but other musical sources, tributaries of this deep musical well that has irrigated our imaginations, pour forth, and in the most delightful, playful, audacious and thought provoking ways.

Hints and echoes of Rogers and Hammerstein, Ennio Morricone and a bold and telling lip sync rendition of Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry.”

The ensemble work is excellent. Lloyd Allison-Young, Cassie Hamilton, Clare Hennessy, Annie Stafford, Nicole Pingon, Chemon Theys, LJ Wilson are uniformly and universally in sync, a well-oiled machine with a beating human heart.

Wolfish performances in lambs’ clothing, but never pulling the wool over your eyes, give yourself over to the absolute pleasure of a genuine Baa Baa Sheep Quartet!

SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE plumbs the dizzying highs and destructive lows of a pained artist and the less than amused abused muses. Heady stuff!

Directed by Mathew Lee with Musical Direction/ Sound Design by Oliver Shermacher; Lighting & Set Design by Benjamin Brockman and Costume Design by Aleisa Jelbart, SYMPHONIE FANTISTIQUE is, quite, simply, fantastic.

SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE plays Kings Cross Theatre, atop the Kings Cross Hotel, oppisite the big Coke sign, 244 – 248 William St, KINGS CROSS. NSW 2011.
Sunday Matinee 21st February – 5pm
Season23rd-27th February 7.30pm