Kelly and Co inspired by feathered friends
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Fourteen poems are presented, including one by the project’s only living poet, Robert Adamson, whose verse about the Tawny Frogmouth – “the night’s flying with you” – is a beautifully fitting finale.
The poems are joined by instrumentals, also themed “birdily”, and played impeccably on piano, guitar (Ledger), cello (Tim Nankervis) and violin (Helen Ayres), with Alice Keath presiding over voice, percussion, autoharp and banjo.
Yet the material can’t entirely decide if it’s for a gig, a poetry reading or an abstract musical theatre. At its best, it “takes wing” as uncategorisable hybrid of the three.
This hybrid happens when the players turn from their individual expressiveness to cohere forcefully like, well, like a band – as on Robert Wilbur’s A Barred Owl and Judith Wright’s Thornbills. On John Keats’ Ode To A Nightingale Kelly moves from beat gen spoken word to Shakespearian-style monologue, with Ledger finally finding the volume on his electric guitar, halfway between prog and psych.
And while the classics from Yeats, Dickinson and Hardy are lovely, their muses are thrushes and nightingales. I’m not suggesting the poems should have all come from Judith Wright’s classic 1962 collection, Birds, because two already are. But if they had, the show would’ve flown the coop of its understatement.
Article source: https://www.watoday.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/when-your-teen-heartthrobs-grow-up-20181217-p50mry.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed
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