I cried. That’s it really. Except perhaps to add that the younger woman sitting in front of me did too, and the elder lady beside me was quietly mopping herself off as the house lights came up. THE SECRET SINGER is a story of women. It has a huge heart and it has secrets of the heart to share. It’s a new work and might undergo changes after this first outing but what we see playing at the Eternity Theatre now is sweet, moving and empowering.
We meet Emjay. Teaching singing in a church hall with a cheap, beaten up, tinny, electric keyboard is not what gets her out of bed each day. Making a living, getting paid for this half-life of no engagement, that’s why she’s there. Rent looming and cancellations escalating, she needs to get her tish together in a myriad of ways. On the other hand Jenny is a woman on a mission. Cat obsessed and timid despite her colourful exterior display, she wants to sing in seven choirs on seven days a week and she has a night predator’s focus on Emjay as the person who can release her secret voice.
Written by Joanna Weinberg, THE SECRET SINGER has its inspiration in a real life Jenny, who I had the pleasure to meet in June at a musical taster for the show. But Weinberg has crafted 75 minutes that is more than a biography. Instead it is a gentle treatise on aspiration and motivation and the possibility of escape from lives of quiet desperation. It is about the sacred bond between teacher and student and blessed power of music to heal. And above all it is about the love of singing.
Genevieve Lemon is a wonder, where does she get her energy, just off the run of a huge undertaking elsewhere? While Emjay might appear as a low key role, it’s based in actuality, has limited lows and highs never rising to hysteria or sinking to melancholy, Lemon gives us a masterclass in the micro here. She can be irritated to extreme but holding it in through gritted teeth because she’s a teacher and she needs the money. Lemon vibrates with the unsaid in flashes and repression and frustrations controlled. Her final speech is superbly rendered, replete with the rational, driven by the only just held in emotional and informed by the growth of this controlled, condensed, concentrated character.
But I was teared up well and truly before that by Kate Mannix’s work before this denouement. The second to last song is joyous and elevating and Mannix’s masterly development of the character of Jenny reaches out to educate and inform. It’s a highly empathetic portrait of someone who has lived quite a life and who knows more about humanity, its kindness and cruelty, than our perceptions of her might allow. Jenny becomes more knowable as Emjay tussles with her own lethargy to find a way to teach her. Mannix’s work in allowing Jenny an impassivity and interiority which burbles with mystery and secret passions is lovely to watch.
The singing too is delightful. The songs, for the main part, propel the plot and are interesting in their narrative or emotional intent. Towards the centre of the production, there are some that didn’t quite hit the mark for me and allied with an overly fussy direction (Also by Joanna Weinberg) there may be some tinkering to do there later. But THE SECRET SINGER hits all the right notes where it counts.
And kudos to Matthew Reid who is Musical Director. His playing chimes with the emotional content, bright or thoughtful, and his orchestrations around the rising of the aspirational are very subtle and effective. The production design from Brigette Thorn grounds the production in place and elevates when required with the simulated stained glass arches lit for mood by Richard Whitehouse.
There are women, not Madonnas, watchful and enshrined in the 3 gothic panels and the analogy is not lost on the audience. Jenny and Emjay meet as strangers but very often women form bonds that are fierce and creative. THE SECRET SINGER takes that idea and gives every person watching a chance to revel in the joy of coming together in creation.
THE SECRET SINGER from Lawrence Jackson and John Feitelson in association with Darlinghurst Theatre is playing at the Eternity Theatre until September 9th.
