Music the star in grim portrait of a painter

Having written The Secret Death of Salvador Dali, with Three Furies Australian playwright Stephen Sewell turns to the greatest figurative painter of the 20th century, the Anglo-Irish artist Francis Bacon.

Like The Boys, for which Sewell wrote the screenplay, Three Furies offers an extremely grim portrait of masculinity and male relationships.

The "scenes" from Bacon's life deal in particular with the destructive relationship between Bacon (Simon Burke) and his lover, also his model and muse, George Dyer (Socratis Otto). There is occasional tenderness and affection, but much more cruelty and violence.

In exploring this dark material, Sewell shrewdly hits on the mode of cabaret, punctuating episodes between Bacon and Dyer with songs and monologues.

Brian Thomson's set, which cleverly combines the world of cabaret and Bacon's studio, allows director Jim Sharman to contrive a series of images that echo the contorted figures of Bacon's paintings.

Most crucially, three doorways upstage provide for a series of triptychs, a Bacon hallmark.

Damien Cooper's lighting faithfully enhances the effects.

The highlight of the production is the music, composed by Basil Hogios and performed by three musicians and, as chanteuse, Paula Arundell, who has a splendid, sultry voice and remarkable control.

Indeed, Arundell gives the standout performance of the show. She is the third fury, Tisiphone, a Chorus-figure, who comments on the action between the The Painter and The Model.

The haunting, intoxicating music draws us in and promises to raise the temperature of the drama.

But the mise en scene, with its too carefully calculated images, and the other performances - especially Burke's mannered Painter - keeps us too cool and at a distance.

This may be intentional, but it is strangely at odds with the powerfully visceral quality of Bacon's painting.

Although there are some strong images, increasingly others too patently lack the intensity and dis-ease of the paintings they quote.

The carcass that slides into the left doorway from time to time has none of the impact of the originals. The debauchery in which Bacon and Dyer supposedly indulged also proves surprisingly anodyne.

There is certainly much to admire in the production and performances.

The stage management is impressively slick in dealing with scene and costume changes, and the actors are highly accomplished.

It is exciting to see this kind of adventurous work staged with such high production values at a venue like Skycity. But overall, this medley of scenes does not quite add up to the sum of its parts.

*What: Three Furies: Scenes from the life of Francis Bacon
*Where: Skycity Theatre