John Gardiner

Tableaux John Gardiner

Embedded in the intellectual and creative milieu of Classical Music as envisioned by a thirty five year old Australian composer preparing to undertake a début recital tour of England, Tableaux parallels the romantic traditions established in Works such as Much Ado About Nothing, Restoration Comedies, the novels of Jane Austen, and the Plays of Oscar Wilde. The eponymous main character is assigned an English Agent for the tour, the working daughter of an Earl, whose best friend is an illustrator for The Spectator, but more importantly is revealed to be the daughter of a Marquis. Tableaux creates vivid romantic arrangements through developing intertwining relationships among the protagonists, against a tapestry woven with social, cultural and political observations on an egalitarian Australian society and hierarchical English aristocratic class structure. Tableaux is a Comedy of Manners for the twenty-first century in which Love is ultimately triumphant.