There was one moment early in this striking work, when I was standing closely and near the bottom of four wooden slides located at Coney island, as 35 children dressed in earlier twentieth century costume slid in groups of four in delight, as the Sydney Philharmonic voices flowed around with singers walking carrying portable mike boards, there was a moment when I lost sense of time and thought I saw myself in the presence of a laughing child, or was that my mother at 12 years old smiling at me? How many generations have slid or floated down those wooden slides, in the ninety years since they were built?

NIGHT SONGS was like that. The work outstripped our knowledge of how music theatre is performed, or how we are meant to respond. The cast, including the full choir, children, instrument ensemble, and lead soloists (Peter Coleman Wright and Cheryl Barker) were animated and moved, concurrently. I wondered at the start why the audience was required to stand (some seats are available for those needing them), and it soon became clear. The audience was on stage, the whole space was the theatre, the performance flowed around them. It was not a case of following discrete acts – the show itself was decentered. You could be one metre from a lead singer, or part of a procession of the singers, or very close to children laughing, running, making up, lying down. 

The children were so disciplined and performatively apt, and when, at the end, they re-entered as a solemn column and walked up the high centre stairs between slides, and disappeared into a room of smoke in the furthest reach of the cavernous playground, while Elgar’s Nimrod Enigma Variation was sung, well you could sense, even hear, many tears in the audience gazing at such a rare and exquisite image, one quite impossible to do on stage.

“In the even’s twilight

I see his face now smiling

I here her voice now calling

Calling ‘cross the field just out of sight.”

The work was a memorial for the experience and loss of children in war. Referencing World War One, it is entirely applicable today. We need to be reminded of the tragedy unfolding today in our world. We also need to be attentive to, and be uplifted by, the innocence of children, in the face of war – and the show does that! The music was assembled according to the thematic narrative – Stravinsky, Mahler, Poulenc, Elgar. This show (directed by Matthew Barclay) was overall such a brilliant conception and development – the inclusion of children in that venue was of course likely, but to shape a narrative and music through bright but often solemn material really allowed the historical patina of the Coney Island space to radiate. 

The show was in situ, and multiform, like none other I’ve seen. I hesitate to say like any other – but it certainly felt pioneering in its use of three dimensions, layered and animate fields of performance, lighting and projected patterns. Outside the shapes of other edifices of the imagination stood – copulas, curves, wheels, faces. For decades Luna Park has stood paradoxically opposite the Sydney Opera House. This week the harbour rubicon was crossed, and something very operatic and magical occurred in this little popular playground of North Sydney. A new work for the festival. I dearly loved it. Thank you to its producers and the Philharmonia Choirs, and to the Festival of Sydney.

NIGHT SONGS AT CONEY ISLAND plays until 25th January with limited tickets remaining.

The performance reviewed by Geoffrey Sykes took place on the 22nd January 2024.