Old Fitz Theatre, May 16
5/10
Coined by writer John Koenig, “sonder” is the profound realisation that everyone you see is the protagonist in their own life story. As Romeo puts it in this experimental piece of musical theatre, “The story you live is the one you pass down – your very own legend.”
Sonder is a brave idea: musical theatre with one performer, no live musicians, and story-telling that flits between conventional narrative, myth, ritual and song, the latter being ballads laced with electronic dance music.
The lone performer is Riki Lindsey, who also wrote the book and lyrics, while Mitchell Sloan crafted the music and Alexander Berlage directed, designed and lit the show, aided by movement director Fetu Taku.
Lindsey mostly has the voice and presence to hold the stage for an hour, but the same can’t be said of his writing. He has his protagonist, Romeo, coming of age in New Zealand, studying Mau Rakau (a Maori martial art) and wanting to be a warrior to gain the approval of a father whose violence and depravity result in a broken home. Lobbing in Berlin, Romeo falls in love with Toby in a nightclub. After a brief, blissful cohabitation, he’s dumped, and, heartbroken, ponders the nature of love and what went wrong.
The problem is that it’s too bald. We know all that Romeo knows and Romeo knows all we know, and without any discrepancy we merely observe him, rather than becoming engaged.
Both story and character are enormously flattered by this world premiere production. Berlage is among our most accomplished directors, responsible for the Hayes Theatre’s 2019 American Psycho and the Old Fitz’s 2023 A Streetcar Named Desire, among many others. Here he places Lindsey on a reflective black floor in a ring of bright light, with reflective triangles flying in and out around him. These catch and fragment the light, like memories distorting our pasts.
Add some pleasant songs and a likeable performer, and the show’s visual and aural aspects are strong enough. So are parts of the text, as when Romeo tells us of a caterpillar whose cocoon is smashed in a storm before it has completed metamorphosis. Then we share his sense of wonder, rather than struggling to sympathise with a character who is often too one-dimensional to win it. Singing about the power of love and love’s capacity to hurt doesn’t cut it.
Yet you have to admire the sheer audacity of the whole project: of daring to imagine a musical that conforms to none of the conventions (other than overuse of the word “love” in the lyrics). It adds up to bold art, but compromised theatre. Even when Lindsey performs some Mau Rakau stances and motions (tutored by Herb Ratahi), one senses a level of physical commitment is missing. Nonetheless, if we gave out stars for daring to dream a different dream, this would have the box set.
Until May 23.
https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/sonder