Review – Katie Noonan & Circa: Love-Song-Circus
Love-Song-Circus is a tribute in music and movement to the courageous and resilient women who were exiled as convicts to add gender balance to Van Diemen’s land. Katie Noonan has assembled a hugely talented ensemble for this conceptual work, including arranger Steve Newcomb, Benjamin and Zoe Hauptmann on guitar and double bass, the Gossamer String Quartet and circus company Circa, with direction from Yaron Lifschitz. The show premiered at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2012, and Noonan has brought it back to Adelaide for five shows only as part of an Australian tour.
Noonan’s incredible, soaring voice is well known to Adelaide audiences, from her time with band George to appearances at the Cabaret Festival. She does not disappoint with this inspired performance. Noonan conveys the devastating tales of these convict women with such haunting clarity that it seems she is channeling the spirits of our collective ancestors.
Mirroring the exquisite compositions is the movement of three young circus women. They perform group acrobatics and solo acts using a suite of apparatus from hand-balance poles to aerial hoop, rope and silks. One acrobatic act on a foldout chair evokes the discomfort of those treacherous boat journeys. These women show the strength, bravery and solidarity needed to survive and even flourish in the unruly penal colonies, where women were forced to abandon their children to do hard labour and suffer unwanted male attention.
Love-Song-Circus is powerful, uplifting and gut-wrenchingly beautiful. Noonan gives voice to the long-unspoken stories of the female pioneers of Australian stoicism. This piece is a necessary reminder of both our difficult past and the need to welcome and value our next wave of women arriving in this country by boat.
