Featuring
Tama Matheson – writer & actor
Brett Brown – actor
Excerpts from:
John Rodgers Carolling (Australian bird sounds, transcribed for strings)
May Brahe/Helen Taylor Bless This House
John Thorn/Henry Lawson The Shame of Going Back
John Thorn/Henry Lawson Faces in the Street
Peter Sculthorpe Port Essington
John Tavener Eternal Memory for Cello and Strings
Miriam Hyde Fantasia on Waltzing Matilda (arranged for Strings)
Cameron Patrick Impressions of Erin for String Orchestra
With selections of poetry and writings by Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson
When The World Was Wide is a fascinating, unique and innovative musical and literary showcase
Titled “not quite a concert, not quite a play”, When The World Was Wide combines the incredible musical skills of Camerata, with the artistic talent of writer and actor Tama Matheson, in their fifth successful collaboration. The performance highlighting the unusual and often strained friendship between two aspiring Australian poets Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, drawing on atmospheric and evocative music to set the scene. When The World Was Wide is the fifth collaboration between Camerata and Tama Matheson, following on from their smash hits including White Mouse and Panufnik.
The unique collaboration stemmed from a Philip Glass performance of Euchorus at St John’s Cathedral where Matheson was reading poetry by Alan Ginsberg at the first Mystical Cathedral concert. As the audience were seated, both Tama Matheson (Helpmann Award nominee and currently the Artistic Director at the Albert Hall, London) and Brett Brown (Ian Potter Cultural Foundation and the Art Music Australis recipient), as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson were moving around on stage in character. Members of Camerata slowly joined the actors on stage, cleverly imitating the sounds of the bush with their stringed instruments as part of John Rodgers’ Carolling. By the time the latecomers were seated in the Concert Hall, we had been transported to dawn in the outback with a cacophony of bird song.
Using excerpts from the poems of both Paterson and Lawson, and published letters from the Bulletin newspaper, the actors told the fascinating and contrasting lives of the two iconic bush poets, Lawson and Paterson. Although both were born in the bush in large families, their lives were very different. Having lived in the Snowy Mountains where the poem of Paterson’s “Man from Snowy River” is an integral part of the local heritage with Paterson revered as a God, it was incredible to hear how accomplished a man he was having worked as a lawyer, a vet, a soldier, a journalist and a foreign correspondent, as well as a poet! Unfortunately Lawson, despite his literary wit and laconic observations, succumbed to “the drink,” ruining his promising career through wasted opportunities, even failing in an attempted suicide.
Paterson supported his friend through it all, as he relished the poetic skills of Lawson and felt guilty that his sparkling career had been counterbalanced by Lawsons’s struggling one. The audience were thrilled with their dactylic banter, as sparring poets. Excerpts of their witty commentaries on each other’s poems were published in The Bulletin newspaper as a series of poetic debates. Lawson shrewdly described Paterson’s idyllic “Clancy of the Overflow” as “a stupid poem which wafted like a fairy on a rose petal!” The synergy of the banter between the two actors was hilarious as they combined their poetic battle of wits with slapstick to great effect.
The humour and dramatic entertainment was very unexpected at a chamber orchestral concert, but very welcome, as it could have been a dry historical critique of the two poets. However, the writing was well done and the actors were so entertaining and skilled with their banter, singing and dancing, that they eclipsed Camerata. It was only when there was a pause in the dialogue that the audience could fully appreciate the dedication and skill of the musicians. Fortunately, there were dramatic pauses when Camerata flourished, thrilling the audience with excerpts of Copland, Grieg and Thorn, and the iconic Australian music of Sculthorpe. When The World Was Wide is a fascinating, unique and innovative musical and literary showcase melding Australia’s best ballads with iconic melodies and skilful performers.
28 November 2019, 7pm
Dr Gemma Regan