Austrian choreographer and performance artist Florentina Holzinger isn’t known for holding back. So it is when 24 naked women – young and old – take to the stage in A Year Without Summer. The show has been described as apocalyptic theatre and medical cabaret. It blends horror with pop music parody. Holzinger sets up the contention thus:
It is 1816 and a group of artists gather indoors at the Lake House for a considerable period because it is raining incessantly. Their number includes Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, and they reflect upon life, death and science. The previous year, Indonesia’s Mount Tambora erupted and blacked out the sun. It is considered the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded human history. Crops are failing. Famine is widespread. As the volcanic dust spreads globally, this becomes known as The Year Without Summer.
We, the audience, witness the gloom even before we enter the theatre because smoky surrounds greet us in the foyer. The tone is set. Clearly mortality is at stake, so these artistes go to town, taking us into the here and now. Early on they seek creature comforts in sex … in a wild, orgasmic orgy. This is a piece about pleasure and pain, pushing boundaries, exploring everlasting life. Doctors enter the equation.
One woman gives birth, but it is hardly conventional. Another gets piercings and an extreme facelift. This is a brave new world being shaped by unchecked technological growth, artificial intelligence, robotics and bioengineering. A giant, inflated female torso without a head, arms or legs forms the centrepiece for a period. The artistes crawl out from its vagina. Props, including hospital beds, are wheeled in.
Music starts out gently and ebbs and flows with the various scenes, on occasions reaching a cacophony. A number of the performers, as many as six at a time, break off and form the band. At one point we see an accomplished aerialist. The whole group interacts in front of and inside a boxy structure that represents the Lake House. There is a trampoline on either side and what becomes an ice-skating rink on top.
Two giant video screens hone in on the action, at times giving us a bird’s eye view. A mad capped Sigmund Freud – the founder of psychoanalysis – appears, taking an in-depth look at female anatomy. So too the Angel of Death, German SS officer Joseph Mengele who conducted hideous, sadistic experiments on Jews during WWII. He is in a brief stand-off with the French naturalist and zoologist – the founding father of palaeontology – Baron Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier. And then, before this is over, Frankenstein appears.
A Year Without Summer is interpretative artistry, highly creative, bold and brazen, designed to shock, surprise and inflame. It most certainly succeeds in doing so, building to a gut-wrenching, grotesque crescendo, which I am not about to spoil. Grounded in the traditions of Frankenstein, what I will say is careful what you wish for, as eternal youth may not be all that it is cracked up to be.
Two and a quarter hours without interval, A Year Without Summer is part of Melbourne’s RISING Festival, which continues until 8th June, 2026. For more information about the festival, go to https://2026.rising.melbourne
Alex First
Other reviews you might enjoy:
- Robyn Archer: An Australian Songbook (Arts Centre Melbourne) – narrative concert review
- The Chronicles (Arts Centre Melbourne) – dance review
- BLKDOG (Arts Centre Melbourne) – dance review
Alex First is the editor of The Blurb. Alex is a Melbourne based journalist and communications specialist. He also contributes to The Blurb on film and theatre.