THEATRE REVIEW: AUTO-TUNE

Writer/Performer/Musician Mark Rogers

Director/Designer Solomon Thomas

Photo credit Ravyna Jassani

The Studio, Sydney Opera House until September 7

Reviewed by Ron Lee, CSP

What if you could go back, review your life and auto-tune it to get rid of mistakes you’ve made, just like they do with songs in post-production? Your life experiences would run perfectly between the lines.

Michael is a teenage Silverchair fan in Wagga Wagga in the early 2000s and he discovers that he has the power to do just that.

His journey is told through an audiovisual set of fresh indie songs and live video captions. It's a musical story about self-doubt, regrets, friendships and loyalties, possibly writer Mark Rogers’ autobiography.

With Rogers, the other performer/musicians are Ashley Bundang and Snowy Halliwell who are much tighter than they first appear. They take us across a number of musical genres, and come up with a few surprises.

I really enjoyed AUTO-TUNE for its creativity and innovation and suspect that audience members who are younger that I am will appreciate it even more.

AUTO-TUNE is part of the Sydney Opera House UnWrapped series which “brings independent creators to the stage and introduces audiences to groundbreaking original performances”. This season, there are 14 works in the series.