(Photo credit: Jeremy Mimnagh)
The Familiar Unconventional
by Christian Baines
Self-professed ‘dirty opera,’ Julie Sits Waiting brings the contemporary story of adultery by way of online dating to the chamber opera stage. Familiar? Yes, but also unconventional in its execution. Julie (Fides Krucker), married to a police officer and Mick (Richard Armstrong), an Anglican priest, make for an unusual tryst, one that carries the weight of both characters’ advanced years. These are not the sexy adulterers of sleazy pulp novels, and that sense of realism sits the work uncomfortably outside the bounds of the familiar. That is, arguably, right where this story needs to be.
The show is perhaps more a sensory experience than a narrative one, more interested in riding through Julie and Mick’s journey of lust and fear than making sense of it. It’s rare to see such a rich collaboration between designers in this kind of piece, and in Julie Sits Waiting, their work gives the audience a much greater sense of the characters’ experience than they might glean from the libretto alone. Yes, we’ve seen visual tropes like broken shards/blades on many a stage before, but combined with Jeremy Mimnagh’s surreal video and Louis Dufort’s evocative, disturbing score, it’s an effective setting.
