Shit, it vindicates everything I said here recently, about the Opera Australia standards. The acting and singing was pathetic….. 2nd or 3 rate conservatoire standard. The ‘designer white’ staging, on the famously puny Sydney Opera house stage………..Gross Regie: watching ‘extras’ in muted army camouflage pattern ‘get -up’/ the two men returning dressed in snow glasses and strong primary colored snow gear/ the girls depicted as rich bitches – home and tired, from a designer boutique shipping trip with their white bags (of course!) in tow. Finally they run around, (stripped out of their intended white wedding dresses) in white silk petticoats and high heels! Everything about it and everybody in it, so decidedly ‘campy’, so self smitten with this amateurish display. I only want to know how much of the audience was wall papered to get that show of mild applause going; as the two comperes, gushed how there was going to be more operas televised. Shit! It always comes in waves, they say. And I did not mean Opera, per sec!

Sharman’s work is well known. Still reveling in being a over- the – hill provocateur’: Back in the 70′s he produced a King Lear: with vomiting ; and latex suits worn, opening to reveal their ‘spaghetti -entrails’ falling out to accompany the violence. This Cosi needed a similar ‘dump’.