The Seven Deadly Sins: Linn's Elizabeth cosplay is a professional maid
The Seven Deadly Sins
The first volume of The Four Knights of the Apocalypse, the manga sequel to The Seven Deadly Sins, arrived in Italy a few days ago, but it is difficult to forget the characters of the original work. In this regard, today we offer you a cosplay of Elizabeth signed by Linn who for the occasion serves at the tables of a real bar, with the classic waitress uniform of the Boar Hat.Elizabeth is one of the main characters of The Seven Deadly Sins and princess of the kingdom of Liones. In the first chapters of Nakaba Suzuki's manga we discover that despite herself she had to flee the capital to go in a desperate search for the Seven Deadly Sins, a legendary and feared order of ex-knights, who could help her restore peace to the kingdom and foil a plot. against the royal family. Thus begins the journey of Elizabeth and Meliodas, the captain of the order, to search for the remaining members of the Seven Deadly Sins.
In the shot below, Linn plays the role of Elizabeth based on the classic maid uniform of the Boar. Hat, the "mobile tavern" of Meliodas. The costume is a disguise to conceal the girl's identity, but later became the character's standard suit for much of the work. The cosplay in this case is particularly successful: costume and wig are impeccable and faithful to the original, and the idea behind the shot is also nice, with the model intent on serving at the tables of a royal bar, who knows the joy of the patrons !
If you are looking for other cosplay we suggest that of Starlight from the Amazon Prime Video series The Boys by Kalinka Fox. Staying on the theme of anime and manga, however, we recommend the cosplay of the demoness Daki from Demon Slayer made by Yume No Doll and the cosplay of Makima from Purin's Chainsaw Man.
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Seven Deadly Sins and 15 musicians at the Old Fitz
On 31 March audiences will get their first look at Constantine Costi’s new production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel (also known as the Little Mahagonny). The double bill is being presented by Red Line Productions at Sydney’s tiny Old Fitz Theatre with the generous support of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and the Goethe-Institut.
Constantine Costi, director of The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel at Sydney’s The Old Fitz. Image supplied.
Commissioned by the 1927 Deutsche Kammermusik Festival in Baden-Baden, the Mahagonny Songspiel was something of a litmus test for Weill and Brecht before they expanded the work into their full-length opera in 1930. Despite their success, the partnership dissolved into acrimony and Weill fled Nazi Germany for Paris in 1933. That same year, Edward James asked him to create a ballet chanté for his wife and dancer Tilly Losch. James was patron of the dance troupe Les Ballets 1933, which had been co-founded by the choreographer George Balanchine. The result was a work that revolved around Anna II, created for Losch, and Anna I, written for Weill’s wife Lotte Lenya. The two Annas headed for the big smoke in the hope of finding fortune and raising money to build a home for their family, performed by an all-male quartet. Lenya’s own lover – a bass – was cast as the mother in the original production. Weill had hoped to engage Jean Cocteau as librettist, but the French poet declined and Brecht begrudgingly rejoined his old writing partner on the project.
“I would have loved to have seen a collaboration with Cocteau,” says Costi. “In my opinion, Kurt Weill was the genius and we know that Brecht was furious when people walked out of The Threepenny Opera whistling the tunes and not parroting his pithy, political lines. There’s something ironic about putting their first work, Mahagonny Songspiel, together with The Seven Deadly Sins, which was their last.”
The two works have been presented together before, especially since they now feature similar orchestral forces thanks to a reduction of The Seven Deadly Sins for just 15 players. Nevertheless, the pairing has not always been a happy marriage, with the narrative force of The Seven Deadly Sins often overpowering the fragmentary nature of the Mahagonny Songspiel. Costi hopes to redress the balance.
“I don’t want it to be a case of ‘curtain down, curtain up’ and suddenly we’re in a completely different world. They need to cohere. I think a crucial element is which piece comes first. We’re opening with The Seven Deadly Sins and setting up a world of incredible irony and repression of the dancer, Anna II, who is key to our rendering.”
“On a practical level, Anna II is the figure who can traverse these worlds. In Mahagonny, she enters a world of sex, drinking and smoking – everything that hadn’t been opened up to her in The Seven Deadly Sins. From the repressed world of Christendom, Anna II suddenly finds herself on this roller coaster of debauchery, vice, fanfare and fun. If there are no rules, what happens? What are the repercussions? Here, Anna II is equally a victim. It’s a case of damned if you do and damned it you don’t – the morality of two polar extremes.”
As flipsides of the same character wrestling with the need to hustle and make ends meet while maintaining the moral high ground, the two Annas have long been considered an inherently Freudian element in The Seven Deadly Sins. Costi agrees.
“We know that Freud used pseudonyms for the people in his case studies. It turns out that the pseudonym of the first known case of Split Personality Disorder was Anna. As written, we are going for this idea of Anna II being the Id and Anna I being the superego. However, it gets more complicated. The joy of Kurt Weill is that you’re never on a sure footing when you listen to his music. He’ll extend a theme and the minute you think you’re settling into a foxtrot, it’ll turn into a tango; or an a capella choir will become almost like a chanson or a torch song. I think this extends to the through line of the characters as well. Anna may be a kind of matron saying, “no, no, no”, but she’s also grappling with her own sense of what’s right and wrong, and what’s at stake. A lot of the works I love deal with the ancient question of what to do with the human animal. Do we let it run wild and free? No. Do we try to neuter and defang it? No. I think these two pieces investigate that question in a fun and compelling way.”
Costi recognises that he is walking a fine line in his attempt to entertain the audience while tackling Weill and Brecht’s social commentary, which is as relevant today as it was in the 1920s and 30s. Fun is key to his approach, as is his avoidance of recreating the smoky atmosphere of a Weimar cabaret, which he considers nothing more than fernweh (‘a longing for far-away places’).
“We’re setting the double bill very much in a hyper-contemporary environment. That’s really important for allowing those allusions to be made. In terms of what’s going on outside the narrative, there’s a really great German phrase – ‘Tanz auf dem Vulkan’ – and I think that’s what this is really about. I don’t need to show you the volcanic magma underneath. It’s implicit. By showing you the Spaß, you’ll get to see some of the darkness coming through. Irony is often the best way to shine a light on something.”
Costi admits that the prospect of working in the 55-seat Old Fitz was initially daunting. Little wonder, given his directorial credits include works of scale like last year’s Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour staging of La Traviata, and the current season of Opera Australia’s La Juive at the Sydney Opera House. However, he couldn’t resist the prospect of a grant from the Kurt Weill Foundation for the reduction of The Seven Deadly Sins and he quickly put a call through to New York.
“When I told them about our little theatre with its leaky roof only 10 minutes from Sydney’s red light district, they loved it. I think Brecht and Weill would have been very excited at the idea of taking their pieces out of the opera house or concert hall and into a completely unexpected venue.”
Some of the orchestra for The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel at The Old Fitz. Photo © Dimitri Zaunders.
This approach is consistent with Costi’s 2016 staging of Il Tabarro, which he staged in a Newtown warehouse with a cast of six in a van. Maestro Brian Castles-Onion had recommended the opera to Costi and they’ve developed a strong working relationship since then. Last year they collaborated on La Traviata and Castles-Onion will be conducting Ensemble Apex for these performances of The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel.
“The musical foundations are so exciting,” says Costi. “Beyond his technical skill, Brian is one of the great musical historians. Anyone who is informed about the history of opera as a form knows that the narrative comes first. Brian really appreciates the importance of text and character. We’re not doing an ossified version of opera. This is a lively vehicle for storytelling. Whenever Brian and I make decisions about the colouring, phrasing or the length of a rest, it always comes down to what the music is trying to do. That’s something we discuss at length and the person who comes out on top is Kurt Weill.”
“We’re doing American accents, and we want it to sound like the classic radio of the 1950s with all its ironic charm. It’s the music that was being played during some of the worst moments in American history. Considering what was going on at that time, was there a song more evil than ‘How much is that doggie in the window’? Brian is up for something that’s entirely playful. We are using operatic voices, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to sound like Wagner. That said, I do believe you need to beguile an audience with vocal charm in order to serve up the most complicated of ideas.”
To achieve this, Costi approached some of the best singers from Opera Australia.
“I told them this would be an experiment, but that I wanted the musical quality and performances to be at the top of their game. Margaret Trubiano is singing Anna I with Nicholas Jones, Anthony Mackey, Andy Moran and Ben Rasheed in the male quartet. Roberta Diamond will then join us for Mahagonny Songspiel. They’re incredible voices and character actors.”
Margaret Truibiano and Allie Graham in a promotional image for Red Line Productions’ The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel at The Old Fitz. Photo © Robert Catto.
“When I watch some versions of The Seven Deadly Sins, it really annoys me if Anna I is simply behind a music stand while Anna II dances around. There’s no real connection between the two. With our entire ensemble, it’s a highly physical piece and the movement is not limited to the dancer. They’re all engaging with their bodies to tell this story. It’s no accident that it was originally called a ballet with songs. There was probably a bit of tongue in cheek about that, but it’s not just about beautiful voices. These singers have incredible bodies that are rarely seen and we’ve got them doing stuff I don’t think they’d ever dreamed of before.”
Costi is once again collaborating with choreographer Shannon Burns, who worked with him on La Traviata and the Pinchgut film A Delicate Fire. The dancer performing Anna II is Allie Graham, whom Costi describes as “a kind of human pretzel”.
Although Costi likes to engage in what he calls an “obsessive amount of preparation”, he is very happy to throw it all out the window once rehearsals start.
“It’s really a joyful collaboration and I’m up for what everyone brings to the table. My job is to balance and harmonise the energies of the performers in the room.”
He adds, “It’s the director as alchemist.”
It will take a certain amount of alchemy to squeeze the production into the confines of the Old Fitz. Together with Burns and the design team of Charles Davis (set), Emma White (costumes) and Trent Suidgeest (lighting), Costi is doing everything to ensure audiences are impressed.
“People should come along just to see how we fit 15 musicians in there,” he says. “That’s a miracle in itself!”
The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel plays at the Old Fitz Theatre, Woolloomooloo, Sydney from 31 March – 23 April.
