2011: Magpie Blues by Ursula Yovich

Ursula Yovich: Magpie Blues at The Street Theatre, June 4 2011

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Even though, on her only Canberra performance, Ursula Yovich’s voice was badly affected by a dry throat, she began with something like a Bessie Smith quality of sound that made it clear why she calls this a Blues show.  Maybe she also felt a bit blue since this was the very last performance of Magpie Blues after some two years, culminating at the Sydney Opera House in May.

Her voice problems seemed to shake her confidence, making her forget her lines on quite a few occasions, and so I’m not in a position to confirm or deny the strongly positive reviews she has previously received. 

I found myself making comparisons and concluding that the show needs a good writer.  Other reviewers were keen on the lack of artifice in her telling of her life story, but for me her work was nowhere near the storytelling standard of David Page’s Page 8.  Page, of course, had the guidance of Louis Nowra to give the narrative structure, while Yovich relies too much on chronological anecdotes.  I felt I wanted the songs to do more of the driving along of the drama, instead of seeming to be illustrations – though the more powerful of these were generally those composed by Yovich herself, rather than the covers of songs she had picked up along the way.

It seemed to me there were two themes.  One was about her getting into WAAPA.  Her story included just a humorous few words about swimming a croc-infested flood to get to the airport from Maningrida.  I wanted to know much more about how she got such a voice, and how this White side of her parentage and experience linked up with the Black side.  She sang in her mother’s Brada language, but the form of the music was much more like American ballad than Maningrida song.

This was the second theme – I guess the main theme from Yovich’s point of view.  It was about her parents’ breaking up when Ursula was eight and her consequent loss of proper understanding of her Aboriginal language, culture and status.  She ended Magpie Blues with Over the Rainbow, her white culture song, asking poignantly “Why can’t I?”.  And yet the success of this work, including at the Darwin Festival, the Dreaming Festival in Queensland and the Garma Festival in Arnhem Land, as well as her acting and singing successes in London, New York and Sydney, seem to say that she can. 

I guess if the performance I saw had hung together properly, the depth of emotion in her story would have been the focus as other reviewers have said.  But perhaps it is time now to bring this show to an end, and maybe work up a more substantial piece in the future using, I would hope, a song cycle of Yovich’s original compositions.

© Frank McKone, Canberra