Ever been so ticked off by someone’s obviously flawed ideas that you’ve wanted to pen a snarky takedown? Sure, you’d write it under a pseudonym – but you could live with the satisfaction that it was you who took down That Guy.
Voltaire, philosopher of the French Enlightenment, lived this dream. His novella Candide, a satirical takedown of German philosopher Leibniz’s optimism doctrine (the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds, since this is the one God created), was a massive hit in 1759 and remains a canonical work – spawning, among other things, an operetta which is now on stage at Sydney Opera House after a Melbourne season last year.
Modelled on the popular adventure stories of the time, Voltaire’s novella stretches Leibniz’s axiom to its most ridiculous conclusions and puts it to the ultimate test. It revolves around Candide, a bastard nephew in a noble family and a student of Pangloss (Voltaire’s stand-in for Leibniz). Banished for having the temerity to court the family’s favourite daughter, he embarks on a world-spanning tour of calamities: repeatedly attacked, kidnapped, “ravished”, robbed, beaten, conscripted, capsized and swindled.
Comedy doesn’t always translate to new times, and Voltaire’s satire of the worst human impulses and events is a tough hurdle to clear on stage: a potential tonal minefield. The operetta adaptation went through multiple books and adaptations over decades in an attempt to get the balance of comedy and tragedy right (the score, by Leonard Bernstein, has always been sublime).
Thankfully, though, we have Dean Bryant, one of Australia’s greatest directors, at the helm. Bryant works across plays, musicals, opera and cabaret, and has a gift for musical comedy; in his productions, language is given rhythm like music and musical numbers are given the directorial care and emotional heft often reserved for dramatic scene work.
His production of Candide is a dazzling show, packed with joyous, clever craft: deeply confident, impeccably cast, stylish – and so glorious-sounding you’ll want to follow the story, no matter which dubious places it chooses to take you or how laboured the book can be.
This production sets the story in the performer’s own accents, creating the initial castle fantasy with a hint of bogan flair – Cunegonde wears Crocs, jibbitz and all. The costumes, all winking confections, and the minimal but witty set pieces by Dann Barber, immediately communicate the tone: this is a satire. It’s bonkers. But also, crucially, we’re in safe hands.
More specifically, we’re often in Eddie Perfect’s hands, who plays Voltaire (our narrator) and Pangloss. It’s some of Perfect’s strongest performance work: he fosters a sense of camaraderie that helps us roll with the (sometimes literal) punches and proves a fabulous foil for any attempt the production makes to get more serious than it needs to be.
The cast is stacked with actors from the worlds of musical theatre, opera, or both. There’s Lyndon Watts’ Candide, who must be consistently, engagingly, funny, and also manage to make the one turn the operetta makes towards something sincere feel meaningful and earned (he nails it); Annie Aitken’s Cunegonde, who gets the jewel of the score, Glitter and be Gay, and makes a deeply satisfying meal of it; and Euan Fistrovic Doidge, as Cunegonde’s brother Maximilian, who gets the biggest laughs of the night in a second-act scene far too convoluted to distill here. Dominica Matthews, Eddie Muliaumaseali’i, Cathy-Di Zhang, John Longmuir and Andrew Moran all shine in smaller roles.
And that Bernstein score! It’s legendary, and rightly so – its overture alone is a beloved part of many an orchestral repertoire. It sounds so wonderfully alive in the hands of the Opera Australia orchestra and chorus under the deft guidance of conductor Brett Weymark. A dizzying tour through European musical styles – dashes of waltz, polka, gavotte and more, mixed with bright Broadway flourishes.
Is this for everyone? Maybe not. Satire can feel awful if you’re not in on the joke, the two-and-a-half hour running time demands a lot from an audience, and any work that’s faithful to a doom-struck source text from the 1700s is going to be packed with images you may prefer to skip. But Bryant coaxes magic out of this beast, little queered spikes of subversion and giddiness. As the show ends with unexpected grace, that magic spills out into the audience: for a moment, it could soothe the calamities you carry.
Candide is on at Sydney Opera House until 14 March
