“Epic in scope and conception, executed with passion and inventiveness, Sibyl at Sydney Opera House will challenge all your preconceptions about art, performance and visual.“
Kate Stratford
5 /5 oak leaves
Sydney Opera House
To 4th November
To enter into William Kentridge’s world of Sibyl, it helps to have a sketchy idea of who Sybil was. A prophetess in Greek legend and literature who, although transmuted over time and place, has remained a female oracle. Sibyl lived in a cave and wrote prophecies on oak leaves which she left at the cave opening. The wind would blow them about, making delivery random so it was never clear for whom each prophecy was meant. So, in seeking to know the future, those who ask are met with chaos and confusion.
South African artist William Kentridge explores the fundamental questions we ask about life, the universe and everything in a visually and aurally stunning production. For Kentridge, the Sibyl is a metaphor for uncertainty and our frustrated yearning to see into the future.
What is different here is the art form. Sibyl fuses drawings in ink and charcoal, illustration, printmaking, film, theatre, dance, live music, installation art, shadow art and opera. Kentridge has drawn on every genre of creative and performing art to create a seminal piece. The first half of the programme is a filmic study which becomes more and more surreal and is supported with music by Nhlanhla Mahlangu and Kyle Shepherd; lyrics are drawn from phrases collected by Kentridge over the years and translated into African languages. Initially you wonder how this will work but within minutes, the audience is mesmerised.
After an interval which has the foyer buzzing, we return to a more opera performance-oriented production, but just as visual. The cast sing and dance against projections of distinctive images of abstract black shapes that rotate, showing different angles and combinations, until a recognizable images from the first half film emerge, providing a brief moment of coherence, only to fall once again into unidentifiable forms. Things created are destroyed within the cave. Coherence is illusory – Things Fall Apart.
The image of an oak leaf and old book pages repeats, a riff on the dual meaning of the word leaf in relation to trees and books. Prophecies are superimposed on projected pages, cast move spin and twirl trying to make sense sheaves of pages whilst Sybil writhes and dances at the centre of it all.
Sybil is not just an exploration of tradition and myth, of the human yearning to seek knowledge of the future. There is space in this production for Kentridge to remind us to resist big data and algorithms which rule our lives; the Sibyls of our times. The AI which predicts and showers us with false truths in order to shape our behaviour and fate is something to beware. There is only one other artist I know of who works in a similar scale, who also tackles big life questions through metaphors encased in multiple art forms. Ping Chong in New York and William Kentridge of Africa would be a formidable meeting of minds and talent.
Epic in scope and conception, executed with passion and inventiveness, Sibyl at Sydney Opera House will challenge all your preconceptions about art, performance and visual.
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
