Sun & Sea shows us our true colours under a blistering sun
Composed by Lina Lapelytė, libretto by Vaiva Grainytė, and directed by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė
Review by Rebecca Cushway
The ability to reflect the complexity of life back upon itself is one of art’s great triumphs. The ability to do this while simultaneously providing profound commentary on the climate crisis is the triumph of Lithuanian creatives Lina Lapelytė, Vaiva Grainytė and Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė. Their opera Sun & Sea is, at its heart, an immersive distillation of strangers’ lives played out in small synchronous moments on the stage of a changing world.
The afternoon I took myself to Sun & Sea, the air was thick and humid; a remnant of the sticky and hot summer morning, warning us of impending rain. I walked through this humidity up to the gallery of Sydney Town Hall, and a wave of cold conditioned air hit my skin before the solemn quiet of the building pressed itself upon me like it would when you enter a church. I stood alone and an usher whispered to me my only instruction: “you can either sit and watch or wander around,” before they opened the heavy doors to an opera performance with no beginning or end.
We stood about the gallery peering down onto a beach made up of 26 tonnes of sand. The crowd was either still, or silently walking the perimeter to get a new angle of the beach-goers below. I’m not sure if it was the grand heritage of Sydney Town Hall, or the hypnotising harmonies of the performers, but there was a feeling of reverence in the air; a hush. There were 12 soloists brought in amongst a team of 28 from Lithuania for this round of performances, as well as local choristers from the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir. The remainder of the fifty-odd people on this indoor beach were plucked from real-life beaches across Sydney during the research stage of this project. Lapelytė, Grainytė and Barzdžiukaitė observed how Australians interacted with the beach, how we behaved in what is such a central part of our culture and adapted the show accordingly. This adaptation closely mimicked the crowds we see at Aussie beaches, but the diversity of body shapes and ages did little to address the overwhelmingly white demographic laid out before us.
The chatter amongst the sand-dwelling crowd intermingled with the spectators’ hushed commentary above to create a sound more choral than the haunting orchestrated melodies. The opera was sung in the round, coming from all directions, so that we were swimming in sound, much like the disorientation of being dumped by a wave. It took the detective in me to find soloists by their telltale headset microphones, and the chorus bounced around the hall such that the sparse recorded synthetic melodies were almost unnoticeable.
There was so much to take in, and so much to be missed by being captivated by one character for too long. The signature takeaway coffee cup being sipped on an achingly hot summer’s day, finska being knocked about in the sand, a surfer walking in from backstage dripping wet, carefully avoiding sunbathers as she lugged her board across the sand. There was a small puppy, well-behaved, weaving in around the crowd, playing with young children in rashies building haphazard sandcastles over buried giggling bodies. A family with a small baby fed her blueberries as she refused to put on her sunhat. An old couple laying on faded towels slowly filled out a crossword. The performers were chatting quietly, scrolling their phones, getting snacks out of old Tupperware and reading books. I could only drink it in, overwhelmed by the multitude of stories being played out at once.
What at first appeared to be an indulgent foray into professional people-watching was turned on its head when I read the libretto. While the opera was translated to English for this performance it was hard to pick out, just by listening, any one line without reading the lyrics printed out on pamphlets. A glamorous mother reclined next to her apathetic husband singing “What a relief that the Great Barrier Reef has a restaurant and a hotel!” as she flicked through home improvement magazines. Suddenly these sunseekers became characters. The ‘Wealthy Mommy’s Song’ is only one tale of entitlement being told, in another, a middle-aged woman complains about trash being left on the beach, an inconvenience to her. Other songs are ridiculous dreams about a famous vegan author who must eat shrimp to reduce the size of their brain tumour. Long-distance lovers lament their limited time together and a pair of young twins imagine 3D-printed reefs that stand the test of time.
The magic of Sun & Sea is that it is not really an opera about climate change at all, but rather a mosaic of experiences that take place in a failing system. Where a disintegrating climate is the backdrop for an ambivalent opera, the source of all that is miserable is the capitalist system that drives it. All of the lives played out in Sun & Sea are affected by the way the world operates now, whether that be sub-optimal recreational diving, trash littering pristine beaches, only ten days of annual leave per year, or far-flung imported fruit from across the globe. There is a subtle wryness to the writing that is poking fun at those that are ambivalent about the climate catastrophe, only concerned with the impact it has on themselves. It also lays out the attitudes of those who care but cannot do anything about it. Sun & Sea is an opera performance that takes the weight of a dying world and does not buckle under the enormity of it but shows us our true colours laid out under a blistering sun.
Sun & Sea played at the Sydney Town Hall from 6 - 8 January, as part of Sydney Festival 2023. Find more information here.
The digital album is available for purchase on Bandcamp.
Images by Wendell Teodoro
Rebecca Cushway is a radio host blessed with the most luxurious radio voice in the Inner West and burdened with the ability to do everything everywhere all at once. She’s not nearly as smart as the undergrads she tutors at UTS think she is.
This review has been generously donated by Bec.
Like this review? Buy us a $5 coffee here. You can do it once, once a month, or as many times as you like.
