Opera Australia at Sydney Opera House
An opera built of gingerbread
If you have ever suspected that childhood fairy tales were designed less to soothe young minds and more to prepare them for a lifetime of low-level dread, then Hänsel & Gretel is here to confirm your fears. Opera Australia’s revival barrels onto the stage with sugar on its lips and menace in its eyes, offering an evening that is equal parts enchantment, excess, and the creeping suspicion that nobody involved has any intention of behaving sensibly.
Jane Ede as the witch
The Witch, for example, storms into the proceedings wearing an eye patch, which immediately raises important philosophical questions about occupational health and safety, pirate unions, and whether eye patches automatically make someone more trustworthy or significantly less so. Jane Ede answers none of these questions and instead launches into her role with such gusto that resistance feels futile. This is a Witch who knows she is terrifying, knows she is fabulous, and knows she has already won. Vocally pristine and theatrically unrestrained, she attacks her music with the enthusiasm of someone enjoying a very expensive dessert they fully intend to charge to someone else’s account.
Food, naturally, is everywhere. The production fixates on it with the kind of intensity usually reserved for diet culture and late-night television. Hunger, deprivation, temptation, it is all here, heavily iced and unapologetically displayed. The Witch’s house, designed by Mark Thompson, is pink, frosted, and alarmingly cheerful, complete with a little viewing window that suggests surveillance, judgment, and possibly planning permission violations. It looks like a place children would sprint towards and adults would cross the street to avoid.
Margaret Plummer and Stacey Alleaume are a masterclass
As the eponymous siblings, Margaret Plummer and Stacey Alleaume provide an impressive combination of vocal discipline and physical chaos. Their squabbles, nerves, and bodily emergencies lend the opera a welcome sense of disorder, reminding us that children under pressure are rarely noble and almost never quiet. Their chemistry feels lived-in, messy, and entirely convincing.
Sandman and the Dew Fairy
Relief from all this arrives via the Sandman and the Dew Fairy, who appear to have wandered in from a different, gentler opera altogether. Kathryn Williams presides over a fairy entourage that looks like it has assembled itself with great enthusiasm and varying levels of coordination. Shikara Ringdahl’s Sandman offers warmth, reassurance, and what amounts to an emotional doona, radiating the sort of calm that makes you briefly forget about ovens, abandonment, and capitalism.
In the orchestra pit, Tahu Matheson keeps proceedings on a firm leash, drawing sparkle and momentum without allowing the whole thing to collapse into sugar-fuelled hysteria. The brighter moments gleam, the softer passages breathe, and the music is given enough space to remind us why this opera has survived generations of traumatised children.
The staging has ambitions beyond decoration. Familiar domestic objects swell and distort, turning comfort into something faintly threatening. Staircases morph into forests, homes bleed into nightmares, and the unsettling suggestion emerges that danger does not begin in the woods at all, but somewhere far closer to bedtime.
Helen Sherman and Shane Lowrencev
Shane Lowrencev’s Father sidles into the action with a warmth that instantly disarms, engaging the audience as if this were a casual conversation rather than an operatic crisis. Helen Sherman anchors the domestic tension with vocal authority, ensuring the parental world feels recognisable, exhausted, and on the brink.
The Opera Australia Children’s Chorus delivers moments of genuine impact, embodying innocence with a seriousness that cuts through the spectacle. Their presence sharpens the opera’s emotional stakes and reminds us what is actually at risk beneath all the icing. (And with the added celebrity touch of Jimmy Barnes’ granddaughter!)
By the end, Hänsel & Gretel emerges as a triumph of controlled chaos. It is loud, lavish, faintly unhinged, and oddly reassuring in its refusal to pretend that life is tidy or fair. Like the best fairy tales, it doesn’t promise safety, merely survival, preferably with cake.
Hansel and Gretel is now playing at the Sydney Opera House until February 28. Tickets from Opera Australia.
