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Hitchcock classic with a twist
By Tricia Fitzgerald
Alfred Hitchcock, the master of Hollywood suspense movies, made his classic film Vertigo in 1957 at the height of his artistic career.
Hitchcock at his best, Vertigo follows the descent of a troubled former police detective into a web of romance, madness, and murder.
Now the film has inspired Phobia, a theatrical thriller produced by the Melbourne-based contemporary opera and music-theatre company, Chamber Made Opera.
It takes the Vertigo story and gives it a new twist.
From an evocative stylised set the production pays homage to the Hollywood Foley sound artists whose ingenuity and skill helped create the great film noir soundtracks of the 1950s and '60s.
Phobia's artistic director Douglas Horton brought together musicians from the Foley-inspired Ennio Morricone Experience group and the physical theatre desoxy duo for the production.
'Every prop becomes an instrument as performers weave a narrative of tension and intrigue through music,' explains Wendy Blacklock of the Sydney-based Performing Lines company, which will tour the production in 2005.
'Sound being produced onstage brings this production to life, imitating the surrounds of an elegant restaurant, the click of high heels on a pavement or the agony of breaking bones.'
'The wryly familiar dramatic clichés are all there-the femme fatale, the gumshoe, the endlessly ringing telephone, the distant scream,' she said.
The production has already played to full houses in Melbourne and regional Victoria, and plans for tours to the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Singapore in 2006 are also underway.
In the mean time, a new Australia Council initiative and the Australian Government's Playing Australia funding program are assisting Phobia's Australian touring circuit in 2005.
Phobia is only the second production to tour under the Australia Council's new 'Mobile States' initiative which aims to take new theatre works out to wider Australian audiences.
The Playing Australia funding program is complementing the initiative by funding theatre companies to tour productions.
'In the past smaller non-traditional theatre companies have been held back by not having the infrastructure to tour on a national circuit...the resources weren't out there for us,' Chamber Made Opera's Douglas Horton said.
'Since Mobile States has come together, and with Playing Australia providing support, smaller and non-traditional companies are getting more opportunity to get their works out to extended Australian audiences,' Horton said.
'This is also helping to maximise the returns on production costs.'
Phobia by Chamber Made Opera will play at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, the Adelaide Festival Centre, Salamanca Arts Centre in Hobart, North Melbourne Town Hall, the Canberra Theatre, Sydney's Performance Space, and Brisbane's Powerhouse Visy Theatre in 2005.
For more information on Government's Playing Australia funding program, visit the website: www.dcita.gov.au/arts
Images from Phobia by Chamber Made Opera.Photograph: Jeff Busby