Lynne's Theatre Notes

THE RISE AND FALL OF LIITLE VOICE ETERNITY PLAYHOUSE FEBRUARY 2019 The current show at the Eternity Playhouse is Jim Cartwright’s THE RISE AND FALL OF LITTLE VOICE as directed by Shaun Rennie . It is a dark , searing production with stellar performances. Deeply grieving and troubled by her father’s death , Little Voice secludes herself away in her bedroom surrounded by her late fathers’ treasured record collection of the great 20th century divas such as Marilyn Monroe , Shirley Bassey ,Judy Garland and Edith Piaf. She escapes into the glamorous world of the divas to escape the house dominated by her boozy, brassy mother Mari.LV could be a famous performer, filling concert halls but she doesn’t want to at all . Set in a northern English town, Jim Cartwright's 1992 play might be based somewhat on the Cinderella story but there are also allusions to Gypsy , Educating Rita , Pygmalion,   A Taste of Honey  and  The Glass Menagerie. The battlefield of emotions ...

https://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/vincent-van-gogh-a-new-way-of-seeing/ ARTHOUSE CINEMA ,  VISUAL ARTS VINCENT VAN GOGH : A NEW WAY OF SEEING FEBRUARY 4, 2019   LYNNE LANCASTER LEAVE A COMMENT Beautifully photographed, proceeding at a rather leisurely pace, this film directed by  David Bickerstaff  examines the life and times of Vincent van Gogh using the amazing resources of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum .We are granted privileged access behind the scenes . We see how the various works are hung in the Museum and some of the directors and curators analyse van Gogh’s works and life. Some of the works are examined in extreme close up detail and van Gogh’s approach to his work minutely analysed. It attempts to analyse his creative process. The film is roughly organised chronologically, following Van Gogh’s short, turbulent life. It is a blend of voiceover narration (often Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo) talking heads segments with the curators ...

Whoa. Is this show hot or what ! https://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/performing-arts/lynne-lancaster/review-dorian-gray-naked-limelight-on-oxford-257213 LYNNE LANCASTER A flamboyant, gripping and compelling production in which Oscar Wilde's fictional character confronts his creator in a fractured afterlife. Photo credit: Clare Hawley In the world premiere of  Dorian Gray Naked , written by veteran librettist and playwright, Melvyn Morrow ( Shout!  and  Dusty ) and 24-year-old composer Dion Condack, Dorian Gray confronts his creator, Oscar Wilde, in a fractured afterlife. Lush and enticing, yet simultaneously darkly disturbing, Dorian’s world is unconstrained by linear time – he occasionally jumps times and tenses in telling his story – but it is all very clearly developed and explained.   Dorian reveals the truth about his passionate amours and his relationship to his creator. He tells it like it really was – outrageous and dirt...

James Jay Moody was AMAZING in this ! Here's my thoughts for Artshub https://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/performing-arts/lynne-lancaster/review-herringbone-kings-cross-theatre-257175 LYNNE LANCASTER Strange and disturbing but brilliant, Herringbone is a fabulous showcase for Jay James-Moody. Jay James-Moody stars in  Herringbone.  Photo by David Hooley. Jay James-Moody gives a gripping,  virtuoso bravura  performance of this dark and intensely disturbing play. In its Australian premiere  Herringbone , written by Tom Cone with music by Skip Kennon and lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh, begins and ends in 1929 right around the time of the Wall Street crash and the start of the Great Depression. The show was a cross between vaudeville, a big Broadway musical and a gothic horror story. James-Moody as George Herringbone is the narrator of the play. He also plays all the other characters within the story. The characters he embo...

A major highlight of the 2019 Sydney Festival https://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/one-infinity-carriageworks/ ONE INFINITY @ CARRIAGEWORKS JANUARY 26, 2019   LYNNE LANCASTER LEAVE A COMMENT One of the major highlights of this year’s Festival of Sydney, this stunning show is a hypnotic, cross-cultural music and dance collaboration, where the audience are also performers. ONE INFINITY blends traditional Chinese music and contemporary dance, the audience an essential part of the performance, in an intricate, mirroring dialogue. It started with the music: Australian recorder virtuoso  Genevieve Lacey  working with Chinese guqin master  Wang Peng , and later English composer  Max de Wardener  and the  Jun Tian Fang Music Ensemble . Eventually they decided their work required a sense of theatre and engaged  Gideon Obarzanek  as choreographer and director who brought together 10 dancers from Townsville-based  Dancenorth and t...

https://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/beware-of-pity-roslyn-packer-theatre/ SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2019 ,  THEATRE BEWARE OF PITY @ ROSLYN PACKER THEATRE JANUARY 25, 2019   LYNNE LANCASTER LEAVE A COMMENT Directed by  Simon McBurney  and  James Yeatman  this is a co production between  Complicite  and  SCHAUBÜHNE BERLIN  . It is an astonishing bravura ensemble piece. It is one of the major Sydney Festival events and has a short season only playing n Sydney. Based on Austrian  Stefan Zweig’s  1939 novel, BEWARE OF PITY follows the misadventures of Anton Hofmiller, a young cavalry officer who falls in love with Edith, the partially paralysed daughter of a local landowner, but goes on to break her heart. Overwhelmed by guilt when the girl takes her own life, Anton enacts a well-meaning but tragically ill headed plot to put things right. It is a story of guilt, pity,  trying to do the right thing and how unreceived...

Long but marvellous https://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/nt-live-antony-and-cleopatra/ FILMED THEATRE/ OPERA ETC NT LIVE :  ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA JANUARY 29, 2019   LYNNE LANCASTER LEAVE A COMMENT This sensational, broad, swirling epic, filmed live from the National Theatre , is magnificently staged and acted with towering performances by Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo in the lead roles. Directed by Simon Godwin we see how the two worlds of Egypt and Rome collide and love blindly leads to tragedy. The production has been transposed to now with mobiles, hi tech computer screens etc and contemporary speech patterns. But the poetry remains and is fresh and exciting ( eg Enobarbus’s “ purple barge “ speech ) .It begins with Caesar’s (Tunji Kasim) arrival at Cleopatra’s monument to discover she has just died and he issues order that she be buried alongside Antony. “No grave upon the earth shall clip in it ,A pair so famous.” We then look back on the great relation...

Much fun https://dancemagazine.com.au/2019/01/a-reimagining-of-the-holiday-classic-in-the-nutcracker-and-i/ City Recital Hall, Sydney. 19 January 2019. In  The Nutcracker and I , part of the Sydney Festival, Romanian pianist Alexandra Dariescu reimagines Tchaikovsky’s Christmas story. Yes, we have the traditional snow flurries, the amazing growing Christmas tree that just gets bigger and bigger, the battle with the Mouse King, the Sugar Plum Fairy, and the Kingdom of Sweets. But it is also autobiographical. The show gently starts with the projections of an animated little girl walking on stage, sitting at the (real) piano and starting to play. With swirling snow, she becomes Dariescu, reimagined as Clara, the girl who dreamt of becoming a concert pianist. Projected onto the gauze screen and bringing the story to life are exquisite digital animations, all hand drawn and created in advance by Yeast Culture, created using more than 35,000 hand-drawn images. ...

Here's my thoughts as for Dance INforma https://dancemagazine.com.au/2019/01/biladurang-joel-bray-and-19-others-in-a-motel-room/ QT Sydney, Sydney. 11 January 2019. One man and a maximum of 19 others in a motel room…  Biladurang , as part of the Sydney Festival, is performed by Joel Bray. It is an extremely intimate and revealing performance which, while, yes, includes some absolutely fabulous dance, is perhaps more physical theatre/performance art/interactive theatre. In a most exciting mix of improv, dramatic monologue, multimedia, family history, comedy dance – and strategically placed soapsuds – are blended in this show. ‘Biladurang’. Photo by Victor Frankowski. As we enter, the room, which is the stage, is very messy with items scattered everywhere. Charismatic Bray is clad just in his undies but greets us charmingly. We are given black terry towelling bathrobes to wear. For those who drink alcohol, champagne is provided (or water for those of us who don’t). Lo...