Review by Sarah Skubala
Anywhere Festival is back for its 13th year and boasts 60 productions at 35 locations around Brisbane. As its name suggests, Anywhere Festival is a fringe festival where any artist can take part, so long as their shows are performed anywhere but in a theatre.
After a successful 2023 debut, Whistling Past the Graveyard has returned for a second season, and was once again performed on the lawns of the historic South Brisbane Cemetery. There was nothing spooky about this show, rather, it was a poignant celebration of life, death and the rituals that surround them.
There is something truly special about outdoor performances. The extra magic that natural light and surroundings allow, and on a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon, as the winds dropped and the wintery golden hour-esque sunlight dipped low between the trees casting shadows across the lawn, Doctor Leah Cotterell and Mistress Narelle McCoy reflected on the best and worst of funerals, in an eclectic mix of heartfelt and light-hearted storytelling, poetry and song.
Featuring live music from Jamie Clark and Steve Cook with a distinct Irish folk flair, Cotterell and McCoy sang songs that ranged in genre from classical to pop. I wasn’t able to identify all the songs without a credits list, but highlights included Cotterell’s emotional jazz standard ‘Stardust’ and the crowd-pleaser ‘Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again’ by The Angels, while McCoy performed a rousing operatic number.
The pair complemented each other well, with McCoy providing the more lively and entertaining stories while Cotterell tugged at the heartstrings with her understated candour.
McCoy recounted the colourful funeral traditions of her Irish-Australian family in Ipswich, including the outrageous cocktail party wakes she attended in Sydney in the ‘80s. She also shared stories from her PhD research which centred around keening, a special form of singing for the dead, and the Irish merry wake.
Drawing on her own postgraduate study and subsequent memoir which explored her grief as a family carer for people with mental illnesses, Cotterell found both humour and emotion as she shared memories of her late father, mother and sister.
Some classic funerary songs were performed across the hour-long show, including ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘The Lord is My Shepherd,’ while the finale involved the audience joining in on ‘Amazing Grace,’ with lyrics provided in the program. A bit of local history was sprinkled in about the cemetery and its occupants, and representatives from the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery were on hand before and after the show to provide further information.
I completely agree with McCoy and Cotterell’s notion that our culture is not good at dealing with or talking about the inevitabilities of ageing, loss, grief and death. In talking, singing, laughing and crying about it together, Whistling Past the Graveyard felt cathartic and succeeded in bringing some ease to the conversation.
I suspect Whistling Past the Graveyard will go on to become a festival favourite, and I will be interested to see how it evolves in subsequent seasons.
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