Sydney Reviews

Janet Swain's one-woman show Delphi Goes Bassooning is totally charming. It takes the form of a series of short songs which take us through her deeply troubled relationship with the bassoon her mother bought for her when she was 14. And while this is not a scenario set to take the world by storm, it was one which the audience found sympathetic and easy to relate to.

The songs lead us through her love of Jacqueline du Pré (Janet would much rather have played the cello than the bassoon); the terrible moment when she had to play an exam with a broken reed; and her rediscovery of the instrument 32 years later, where it was still in the most recent garage of her mother's home, unplayed and unmentioned all that time. The songs are bookended and punctuated with references to the famous bassoon passage which opens The Rite of Spring, which, one gathers, she never performed.

But perhaps the most engaging episode was her encounter with her grandmother's hatbox. Gaily unpacking this while humming Schubert's song Die Forelle, she drew out endless packets of Dunhills, and the glamorous shoes and costume in which her grandmother performed musicals in a country town. She performed 'all by herself – with the help of' a dozen men including the local methodist minister. And this discovery galvanises Janet to take up the bassoon again and play it with whole-hearted abandon in a band, under the stage name of Delphi Coral, the colour of the tube of lipstick which was also in the hatbox.

This episode was a welcome surprise. On the whole the plot line of the show was a shade predictable, ending with Janet's reconciliation with the bassoon, and her realisation that her mother had been right – Janet was a bassoon, not a cello. We didn't expect that it would end in tears with Janet burning the instrument, although that course of action must have occurred to her at some point.

Janet Swain is a consummate musician, and her songs are delightful. She accompanies herself on an electric keyboard, but though her voice is a true and clear as you could wish for, she sang so softly that some of the words were inaudible. This was perhaps in order to make the whole experience intimate for the audience; but it was a shame, as the texts were as unpretentiously appealing as the music, and I wanted to hear them. Singing that softly might have worked in the venue in the Adelaide Fringe from which Janet has just returned, which seats about 20, but Byron Theatre, which can seat 200, perhaps needed a different approach.

The set was simple – the keyboard, and a table with the bassoon case and the hatbox. These were set so close together that Janet, who is a tall woman, seemed a little constrained in her movements. She has an expressive body, and I felt that Christine Olsen, the dramaturg for the show, in conversation with Delia Silvan, who was responsible for movement and staging, might have given her more opportunity to use it by expanding the space, even just a little. Without this physical space, Janet had to put all her expression into her face, and it is a testament to her skill that this never flagged.

Over the whole show hovered the presence of Janet's mother, Elizabeth Swain, the giver of the bassoon, a musician who spent her life at the forefront of musical education in Sydney. And she was there, in the audience! I couldn't help feeling that the performance might have been a touch more unbuttoned if ...