Skyfall in Concert, West Australian Symphony Orchestra
Riverside Theatre, 2 February 2023

For a few moments, it looks as if the audience is going to be left hanging. It’s the opening scene of Skyfall and agent 007 James Bond (Daniel Craig) has just been shot off the top of a moving train, plummeting into the waters below.

The hero’s frenetic attempts to wrest top-secret information from the enemy are punctuated with flashes of black screen. There’s clearly a glitch and the show must stop. At least, as conductor Jessica Gethin puts it, take a momentary pause.

It’s not the fault of the 90-strong members of the West Australian Symphony Orchestra – bigger than some classical concerts, Gethin points out – but when you’re playing to a movie stripped of its soundtrack, the vision needs to be as seamless as the sound.

Gethin exits quietly and the players sit patiently, as if they have seen it all before. Just as the audience is pondering the prospect of a refund, Gethin returns, bows, picks up the baton and the musicians pick up where they left off, with Bond under water.

A sign of true professionals, it’s further confirmation that our State orchestra is a class act.
The show does go on, and Bond has never sounded so good.

Matching a score note for note as a movie unfolds on an enormous screen above the orchestra is a masterclass of musical precision. If the orchestra does its job well, the audience should almost forget its presence. Bar a few fleeting scenes where the volume threatens to overwhelm dialogue, we do.

And yet the live playing of Thomas Newman’s first Bond score elevates Skyfall in every way, amplifying the tension – and there’s a lot of it – and heightening the quieter moments.

Under Gethin’s fluid direction, the soundtrack surges and softens as we follow the battered but far from defeated spy on a series of seemingly impossible missions.

The percussion section, boasting more than 40 different instruments for this performance, shows its might as 007 pursues a villain in a Shanghai high rise. The whispers of the strings as Bond approaches his childhood home in bleakest Scotland hint at his melancholy beginnings. The beating drums reach a crescendo as Bond’s nemesis comes in for the kill.

WASO at the Movies is a clever way to introduce people to an orchestra – its nuance, power and undeniable skill in full flight without intimidating newcomers.

When Gethin asks for a show of hands for first timers at the start, there’s a surprising number scattered throughout Riverside Theatre. I’d be willing to bet it won’t be their last.

As the screen goes white – this time as planned – a few people make a quick exit, presumably to beat the crowd back to the carpark. Shame, for WASO has a final ace up its sleeve – a rousing performance of the iconic James Bond theme. A bold end to a memorable evening.

We leave, shaken and stirred.

WASO perform Skyfall in Concert at Riverside Theatre tonight.

The next WASO at the Movies is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 in Concert, Riverside Theatre, 14-15 April 2023.

Pictured top: WASO’s powerful Skyfall in Concert leaves the audience shaken and stirred. Photo supplied.