KEY POINTS:
PERFORMANCE
What: Kiwi Shorts
Where and when: Opera Factory, 7 Eden St, Newmarket, tonight at 7.30pm, to Sat April 19, with 2pm matinees on both Saturdays; Good Angel Bad Angel, tomorrow at 9.45pm
Opera Factory is on the hunt for a homegrown work, says its director Sally Sloman. In the meantime, the company has come up with Kiwi Shorts, two double bills of "Kiwi Composers, Kiwi Stories and Kiwi Icons" which has opened for a 10-day season in its "Off-Broadway" Newmarket premises.
And what could be more Kiwi than Philip Norman's A Factory Opera, set in Christchurch's now-demolished Edmonds Factory, or the final piece of David Griffiths' Three Franks, based on Frank Sargeson's A Great Day, in which two mates go on a fishing trip that turns nasty on the sea.
Sloman regularly receives potential operas from hopeful composers but any successful applicant would have to pass her four-point test: "Can I stage it? Can I cast it? Can we afford it? Will it sell?"
Operas set in the Spanish Inquisition with two symphony orchestras, a cast of 45 and 37 tenors are out of the question, she laughs.
"I need a New Zealand Menotti" - and Christchurch composer Philip Norman comes pretty close.
Sloman is directing Norman's The Pleasure Garden, based around the scandal that Frances Hodgkins' painting of the same name created in the Garden City 60 years ago. The appeal?
"It's tuneful so the young ones love it and the music fits A. K. Grant's words so well."
While the Norman works are revivals for the company, the others are Auckland premieres. Griffiths' Three Franks, first staged at the University of Waikato in 2006, is "a delightful trilogy".
Sloman suggests a coup de theatre is in line when the chorus "sing offstage in the corridor where the cast come on and off, balancing the onstage soprano in an ethereal kind of way".
Rod Biss' Marriage a la Mode posed the challenge of fitting Hogarthian vignettes within the resolutely Kiwi spirit of the project.
With a cast led by veteran Barry Mora's Lord Squanderfield, it promises a visual treat when eight people have to work on a card table wearing flowing period costumes without bumping into each other.
Tomorrow sees a one-off guest appearance by Wellington's Not in My Back Yard company, with its touring production of Lyell Cresswell's chamber opera Good Angel Bad Angel.
Taken from a Robert Louis Stevenson short story, this is a bit of a classy thriller - "imagine Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment in a nutshell", Cresswell chuckles over the phone from Scotland.
This NIMBY venture has had enthusiastic reviews in New Zealand and, last year, the Scottish production had one critic saying its early revival should be a high priority and another praising it for "building up an impressive dramatic tension to rival that of a Hitchcock film".
