Matthew Levinson

Dreaming of Leo

Published on 09/01/08
by matt

The man may have a history in advertising and the arts stretching three decades, but by the end of his Sydney Festival tenure he was a fogey. Plain and simple. Boring, stuck in his ways, and running a festival that was polarised between (a) a majority of elitist events celebrating the work of dead white dudes and (b) a few low-brow mainstream events, who could forget how middle of the road Jazz in the Domain was. And his regular columns were fixated on grafitti artists.

Leo

I guess he’s retired, at 72, though he’s still writing a column for the Bulletin and doing the talks circuit.

The reason I bring it up is Daily Tele writer Nick Pickard‘s comment that people are complaining about the festival.

In the Oz, Matthew Westwood said this year’s festival “lacks balance and is a disappointment to some … Theatre has only a small presence, as does visual art. Classical music is absent altogether.”

The Herald Sun’s Chris Boyd said Linehan’s 2008 program is “seriously lacking in good judgement and good taste.”

Pickard reckons critics are dreaming of the past and forgetting the reality of that past.

I am not sure where it all comes from, but I suspect it is certain sections of festival going people who have a shared nostalgia for the days when Leo Schofield and Brett Sheehy were the festival directors. They were the days when chamber music and good old text based theatre were the big hit numbers.

I have a different recollection of those days, and am firmly planted in the camp relieved by current artistic director Fergus Linehan’s vision to create not only an exciting festival, but an energy that fills the streets. It’s a less dusty and more accessible programme that makes The Arts sexy, beautiful and brazen.

Me too. It’d be great to see some more challenging works presented. But the festival’s mandate isn’t polite music, arts and theatre programming you can get year round in Sydney. It should be new or new to us. It should make people think differently. It should fascinate and inspire. And while that may not be true for Brian Wilson, it’s been true for a lot of Festival shows I have seen over the past three years.

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