The Grand Theatre of Emotions: Melodrama and its Modern Manifestations
The realm of theatre has long been fascinated by the extremes of human experience. Acclaimed theatre academic Peter Brooks once posited that melodrama, with its overt and hyperbolic portrayal of emotions and moral values, was ascendant, supplanting traditional tragedy. This inclination towards depicting heightened emotional states with clarity and intensity was a palpable undercurrent at the 2026 Perth Festival, where several productions explored this very territory, albeit with varying degrees of seriousness and intent.
Two standout examples of this melodramatic impulse were Lacrima and Aakash Odedra’s Songs of the Bulbul. While seemingly disparate – Lacrima featuring actors on stage alongside projected filmic close-ups and clips, and Songs of the Bulbul being a solo dance performance set to a sweeping Romantic score – both productions shared a common thread: a tempestuous narrative arc. From their initial moments, it was clear that both stories were destined for a climactic descent into the psychophysical breakdown and self-immolation of their protagonists.
In Lacrima, the audience was introduced to a beleaguered head of a couture studio, played with palpable stress by Maud LeGrevellec. This character found herself ensnared in a web of impossible deadlines, a resentful husband and underling (portrayed by Dan Artus), and the escalating mental collapse of their daughter.
Meanwhile, Aakash Odedra embodied a songbird in Songs of the Bulbul. This avian protagonist was deliberately denied light and blinded by its owner, a cruel measure intended to elicit more plaintive and exquisite singing.
Both of these productions masterfully employed overwrought physicalities to convey their narratives. In Lacrima, sharply raised voices, outright shouting, and tense, aggressive posturing served as potent omens of the protagonist’s eventual physical disintegration. Similarly, audiences witnessed the increasingly anguished twirls and contorted trajectories of Odedra’s dancer, each grand gesture coinciding with climaxes of immense dramatic intensity.
A Comedic Take on Collapse
Offering a distinctly less serious, yet equally over-the-top, approach to emotion and character was The Red Shoes. Here, Melissa Madden Gray, utilising her flamboyant “blowsy diva” persona, Meow Meow, delivered a performance that both satirised herself and challenged theatrical conventions.
The piece saw the performer clambering across a mountain of detritus, assembling and disassembling costumes, and expounding on the tales of Hans Christian Andersen. The production culminated with the cast arrayed across the stage’s front, evoking the joyous marriage finales of Shakespearean comedies. This segment presented a more self-conscious and comedic exploration of collapse and the possibility of uncertain revival.
The Weird and the Loud: Pushing Boundaries
The Perth Festival also showcased works that embraced the peculiar and the boisterous. The Last Great Hunt’s new production, Lé Nør (The Rain), began with the audacious premise of staging a “faux foreign film performed live each night.” This ambitious endeavour involved complex filming setups that were rapidly installed on stage. The entire performance unfolded in a fabricated, faux-Norwegian language, set within a fictional world meticulously modelled on the vibrant aesthetics of 1980s video, complete with era-appropriate costuming and make-up.
Romantic friendships and entanglements were unearthed, fractured, and reconfigured through a series of rapid-fire revelations, culminating in a blurred, on-screen orgy as the cast converged. This production was a prime example of skilled, hyperbolic silliness, executed with remarkable flair.
A personal highlight for many was Chunky Move’s U>N>I>T>E>D. This was a spectacularly bizarre and loud cybernetic mime piece. Dancers moved in and out of darkness, their movements underscored by the pulverising beats of Indonesian industrial music from Gabber Modus Operandi. The performers were adorned in quasi-cybernetic modular exoskeletons, lending them an unsettling, spidery appearance. The dramatic arc of the piece led to its characters being physically sacrificed to a techno-primitive deity. While its narrative may not have adhered to conventional logic, the production was undeniably thrilling, marked by its dramatic leaps between distinct tableaux.
The Tiger Lillies, in many respects, shared a kinship with Chunky Move. Their performances offered a raw, unvarnished experience, amplified by lyrics delving into the lives of “knocked-about wicked souls” and punctuated by moments of intense rhythm. The trio’s amoral ditties, chronicling life on the streets, were presented as episodic lyrical sketches, eschewing the complex psychological and political poetics often found in the work of playwrights like Brecht.
Reaching for the Tragic
Amidst the more exuberant and experimental offerings, the festival also presented deeply meditative and tragic works. Philip Glass’s operatic adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, depicting the demise of Joseph K, telegraphed its conclusion from the outset. However, the opera’s narrative structure, coupled with Glass’s signature alternation of repetitive musical passages, provided ample space to observe K’s desperate struggle. Musically and dramatically, he was rendered akin to an insect impaled on a specimen pin, writhing in its final moments.
One particularly enchanting piece was Jaha Koo’s intimate exploration of migration, alienation, and the ambivalence of memory in Haribo Kimchi. The stage was meticulously designed to resemble a Korean outdoor restaurant. Within this setting, Koo charted his personal journey from Korea to Berlin and then to Brussels. Spoken word passages alternated with short films and animations displayed on screens flanking his modest kitchenette.
Koo recounted how a bag of pickled kimchi cabbage, a parting gift from his family, had exploded during his move to Berlin, its pungent aroma and juices permeating his entire apartment block. This incident became a poignant symbol of the immigrant’s shame. Yet, kimchi also represented home. This theme was further explored as Koo prepared and distributed delightful dishes, including kimchi, to curious audience members.
He also described a return trip to Korea where he visited an eel farm and assisted in capturing several escapees. On screen, a high-pitched, singing, animated eel shared its life story, explaining how eels are born in the ocean’s centre but mature in inland waterways, signifying that eels, like migrants, do not have a singular home but many. The audience also witnessed a snail Koo found in his lettuce, which he kept briefly before releasing. Interwoven with Koo’s simple narration were fantasies inspired by his daily reality, often featuring a Haribo gummy bear. This wistfully melancholic piece stood almost as the inverse of melodrama, its emotional impact so profound that the only “bodily collapse” experienced was the quiet shedding of a tear for the eel’s poignant song.
Cross-Culturalism, Boorloo Style
The BhuMeJha Project offered an evening of performance and food, curated by the spiritual arts and culture organisation Saraswati Mahavidhyalaya. Performed within a circle of ancient gum trees near the river, the very act of reaching the location as the sun began to set was a moving experience.
The musical ensemble featured a rich tapestry of sounds, including Carnatic violin and vocals from musical director Hariraam Lam, Malaysian violin and frame-drum from Mohammad Hisharudy, Indian tabla by Sivakumar Balakrishnan, and, most strikingly, the songs, clapstick, and authorised Australian First Nations choreography courtesy of Yolngu songman Daniel Wilfred.
Dance and song were provided by a predominantly female ensemble, drawing inspiration from Indian classical gestures. Reflecting diverse levels of training, the groupings and poses tended to be fluid, though teachers Sukhi Krishnan and Aarthi Kamalesh demonstrated both facial engagement and physical sharpness. The specific dramatic exchanges enacted by the dancers remained somewhat obscure until Wilfred joined the performance. He offered a brief mime depicting fishing on the Arnhem Land coast with a long spear, a gesture mirrored by the larger ensemble. Wilfred’s vocals cut through the musical blend with a powerful and intense force.
While The BhuMeJha Project may not have possessed the polish of some other productions, it was undeniably highly affecting. Of the shows witnessed, only BhuMeJha felt inescapably rooted in Boorloo-Perth. Ironically, this authenticity stemmed from its indirect allusions to global histories of displacement and settlement, much like Koo’s eels. Consequently, it paid little heed to the melodramatic imperatives of overt legibility or grand scale. Both The BhuMeJha Project and Haribo Kimchi achieved a significant impact through their modest evocation of multiple locations and the complex emotions played out within them. The festival audience, it seems, would greatly benefit from more productions of this calibre.
