Review: THE CHRONICLES at The Dunstan Playhouse

Review by Lisa Lanzi

Melbourne-based Stephanie Lake and her eponymous company bring considerable energy, style, and technical prowess to the stage with The Chronicles, presented as part of the Adelaide Festival 2026. Partnering with an impressive creative team (composer Robin Fox, lighting designer Bosco Shaw, set designer Charles Davis, and costume designer Harriet Oxley) Lake delivers a production of genuine spectacle. Fox's description of a "womb to tomb" aesthetic proves apt, with the work attempting to capture the full span of human experience and everything that fills the space between.

There is that well-worn saying from Ecclesiastes: "…nothing new under the sun…" signifying that human experience, history, and innovation are cyclical, endlessly repeating or merely a rediscovering what already existed. I mention this because much within The Chronicles choreography feels derivative. I don't intend that observation spitefully; all artists borrow from and are inspired by what they see and experience. It is in the subsequent stages of reimagining, rendering, and crafting one's own concepts that originality should shine through. Here, the debt to predecessors remains more visible than the distinctive voice that might emerge from it.

The work opens with a sculptural, almost pieta-like image: a near-naked body suspended beneath a delineated, low-slung light box. From this striking tableau, the choreography unfolds through excellent duet and trio sequences, featuring lifts marked by varied gender combinations, repetition, canon, and what might be described as "creature" movement vocabulary. Ecstatic group passages sometimes evoke Sufi dervishes or Gaga movement progressions, while other sections reflect symbolic ideas: wheat-threshing, perhaps, or percussive traverses suggesting the bustling rhythm of a big city, complete with multiple entrances and exits. Clever gestural sequences also feature throughout, though for me, their meaning and emotional impact failed to land.

Without exception, the dancers are extraordinary. Max Burgess, Rachel Coulson, Tra Mi Dinh, Tyrel Dulvarie, Marni Green, Siobhan Lynch, Darci O'Rourke, Harrison Ritchie-Jones, Robert Tinning, Georgia Van Gils, Kimball Wong, and Jack Ziesing pour their energies and bodies into the movement with total commitment. What I found missing, however, was a sense of genuine connection. The audience is positioned as distant, unemotional observers of extreme action and energy. We can appreciate the passion, recognise the effort, and admire the athleticism, but the thrill remains largely contained within the border of the performance space, circulating among the dancers rather than reaching outward to embrace us. While in awe of the talent on display, I was not engaged emotionally or cerebrally, and found more than a few of the work's "chapters" to run overlong.

The design elements are uniformly pleasing and varied, mostly complementing or highlighting the dramatic movement and flow. Seasonal imagery emerges as a recurring theme, with bales of grass dragged onstage at one point to evocative effect. Under the direction of Christie Anderson, the white-clad Young Adelaide Voices enter carrying lanterns, processing onto an upstage riser framed with greenery to perform the traditional song "Ah Poor Bird", though not in the usual canonical form, with soloist Ethan Lourie featuring. Later, solo vocalist Oliver Mann enters to deliver Alphaville's "Forever Young" a cappella, though at an excruciatingly slow tempo that tests the patience rather than deepening the emotional resonance.

The Chronicles is vivid, visceral, episodic, and undeniably energetic. It is crowd-pleasing in its theatrical and vocal elements, and represents a bold experiment from Lake. Yet bold experiments carry risks, and here the ambition occasionally outstrips the execution.  Even at seventy minutes, the work's many ideas and themes do not quite get the room to breathe and feel added on in some instances; the overall effect means that individual moments of beauty are sometimes lost in the relentless forward motion.

Lake's vision is clearly vast, and her collaborators have risen to the challenge with impressive design and performance output. The company's technical excellence is beyond question. What remains elusive is the emotional through-line that might transform spectacle into something truly moving. For all its surface excitement and vigour, The Chronicles left me admiring from a distance - impressed by the craft, yet ultimately untouched by the experience.

Image Supplied