Heather Mitchell and Josh McConville. Photo: Lisa Tomasetti
Noel Coward wrote Hay Fever when he was just 24 but already a star in the making. A comedy of gleefully bad manners, it was a huge hit when it premiered in 1925 despite lukewarm reviews and is still much performed.
Coward’s plays are deceptively difficult to do well. If the actors only give us superficial flamboyance and witticisms, the humour can all too easily fall flat. But Imara Savage has directed a fabulously funny production for Sydney Theatre Company that has a fresh edge and contemporary energy while still retaining a feel of the period.
The play is set in the household of the eccentric Bliss family. Judith Bliss (Heather Mitchell) is retired actress, determined to keep performing even if she no longer has a stage. Her husband David (Tony Llewellyn-Jones) is a novelist and their grown-up children Sorrel (Harriet Dyer) and Simon (Tom Conroy) still live at home, without appearing to work.
All four invite a guest for the weekend without telling each other, thrusting them into a maelstrom of games and idiosyncratic carry-on that leaves their visitors reeling.
Essentially a lightweight comedy, Hay Fever offers the audience a vicarious thrill in experiencing life with such wayward “artistic” types. But it also celebrates bohemian freedom and vitality, and contrasts that with the rather stuffy, conservative mores of “ordinary” people and their concerns about sex and class.
Alicia Clements’ wonderful design isn’t period specific but subtly combines elements from the 1920s with later decades, setting the action in an attractively ramshackle conservatory full of greenery and eccentric touches like a bathtub for a sofa. Only the inclusion of wheelie suitcases and the decision to have Judith lip synch to Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black when she offers to sing at the piano sit a little oddly.
Clements’ costumes are also terrific with all the Blisses in a permanent state of semi-undress or dressing gowns and the outfits of the other characters speaking reams about their personalities from the anxious Jackie’s girly cotton frocks and Alice band to the vampy Myra’s stylish couture.
Heather Mitchell, Briallen Clarke, Tom Conroy, Harriet Dyer and Tony Llewellyn-Jones. Photo: Lisa Tomasetti
Savage’s excellent cast combines wit with truth. Towards the end of the play, some of the performing becomes broadly comic and more farcical but overall the characters all feel very real.
Mitchell is sensational as Judith, a whirling dervish at the heart of the play. Her comic timing is immaculate and she is gloriously funny as she tears up the stage. Llewellyn-Jones is distinguished yet grouchy as the rather self-absorbed David. Dyer plays Sorrel with a contemporary edge as a young woman testing who she is, while Conroy’s Simon affects a nonchalant flamboyance.
Helen Thomson as the chic, sardonic Myra, Alan Dukes as the proper “diplomatist” Richard, Josh McConville as the rather gung-ho sportsman Sandy, and Briallen Clarke as the mousey, nervous Jackie are the perfect foil as the beleaguered guests. Genevieve Lemon is also very funny in a broadly comic portrayal of the exasperated housekeeper.
The Bliss family can become rather unlikeable in productions but Savage avoids that, ensuring that their love for each other comes across as strongly as their hilariously appalling behaviour.
Hay Fever plays at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House until May 21. Bookings: www.sydneytheatre.com.au or 02 9250 1777
Dan Spielman and Geoff Morrell. Photo: Brett Boardman
Stephen Sewell’s blistering 1983 play The Blind Giant is Dancing is very much of its time but it still feels timely in this ferociously good Belvoir production.
The epic drama is set in the world of NSW State Labor party politics in the early 1980s at a time when Australia’s strong manufacturing base was being dismantled in favour of a free market, with devastating consequences for the working class. Seething with political intrigue, Sewell looks at how power corrupts and at how individuals both shape and are shaped by the world around them.
At the centre of the play is Allen Fitzgerald (Dan Spielman), a social economist and Marxist from a working class Catholic family who begins as an idealist. Unhappily married to Louise (Yael Stone), a Jewish feminist socialist, he is seduced by financial journalist Rose Draper (Zahra Newman) and becomes so caught up in a political power struggle that he sells his soul and his family down the river.
Director Eamon Flack and designer Dale Ferguson bring the play to furious life on a stark set at the centre of which is a large screen, which can either resemble the metal bars of a cage allowing us to see scenes behind it or light up with dazzling brightness, flashing up place names and images to locate the numerous different scenes. It’s a clever solution for a play with umpteen short scenes, while Ferguson’s keenly observed 80s costuming evokes the period.
Steve Toulmin’s sound, which includes bursts of 80s pop songs, and Verity Hampson’s lighting enhance and punctuate the fast-paced staging.
Zahra Newman and Dan Spielman. Photo: Brett Boardman
Unfolding over three acts with two short intervals, Act I requires great concentration as Sewell establishes the main players including: Allen’s arch foe Michael Wells (Geoff Morrell), a corrupt Social Democratic Party secretary; Mr Carew (Michael Denkha) an American advisor to Wells; Bob Lang (Ben Wood) an obnoxious, misogynistic banker; and Ramon Gris (Ivan Donato) a Chilean socialist exile working with Allen, among others.
Flack directs at a cracking pace and it is hard initially to get your head around it all with so much coming at you. But as soon as Act II begins, everything becomes clear and from there the play hurtles along like a runaway train as scenes become shorter and snappier, keeping you riveted.
A family barbecue in Port Kembla where we meet Allen’s father (Russell Kiefel) and brother (Andrew Henry), who are both steelworkers, and his housewife mother (Genevieve Lemon), brings a human face to the politicking. It also gives us an insight into Allen’s tortured personality.
Spielman gives a performance of extraordinary intensity, his body language reflecting the passion that drives him and is tearing him apart. As he slides deeper into the morass, his physicality and vocals become ever more aggressive, his humour ever more sardonic. It’s a huge, demanding role and Spielman is utterly convincing every step of the way.
Stone gives an equally passionate performance as Allen’s activist wife who refuses to play the role of housebound homemaker. Kiefel is superb as both wily capitalist Sir Leslie Harris, who is prepared to take Wells on in the battle over the steel industry, and as Allen’s father Doug who rules the family with a rod of iron. In another compelling performance, Morrell’s Wells has a recognisable touch of the mongrel about him.
Genevieve Lemon and Yael Stone. Photo: Brett Boardman
Lemon brings a gentle humour to Allen’s mother and her efforts to keep the peace within her family are quietly touching, while Newman imbues the seductive Rose with a fascinating sense of enigma. However, the acting is incredibly strong across the board.
Blind Giant is driven by a visceral rage, which Flack’s production captures superbly. At times it feels as if Sewell is delivering an impassioned lecture but overall it’s compelling stuff with an astonishingly good performance by Spielman at the heart of a wonderfully fierce production.
The Blind Giant is Dancing plays at Belvoir St Theatre until March 20. Bookings: www.belvoir.com.au or 02 9699 3444
Samantha Dodemaide and the cast of Violet. Photo: Grant Leslie
Hayes Theatre Co, December 2
Violet is a lovely little musical with a gentle charm that gets under the skin. Before you know it, you’ve been knocked for six.
Written by composer Jeanine Tesori (who won Best Musical and Best Original Score for Fun Home at this year’s Tony Awards) and writer Brian Crawley, it is based on a short story by Doris Bett called The Ugliest Pilgrim.
The show premiered off-Broadway in 1997 and had a short season on Broadway last year with Sutton Foster as Violet. But it couldn’t have been given a more loving production than it gets here, produced by Blue Saint Productions in association with the Hayes, and directed by Mitchell Butel.
Set in 1964, Violet tells the story of a young woman (Samantha Dodemaide) who takes a Greyhound bus from North Carolina to Oklahoma, hoping that a televangelist can heal a disfiguring scar on her face, gained 12 years earlier when the blade flew from her father’s axe.
En route, she meets two soldiers – the cocky Monty (Steve Danielsen) and the kindly Flick (Barry Conrad) who as an African American understands what it’s like to be a misfit. The two buddies take her under their wing and fall for her.
Tesori’s music includes gospel, country, blues, soul, folk as well as ballads and soaring anthems in a more traditional musical theatre style. It’s a gorgeous score, with the songs emerging organically from the story and the characters.
Butel makes a very impressive directorial debut. For starters, his casting is excellent and he draws clearly delineated, truthful performances from the actors. He keeps the action moving fluidly at a perfect pace, and he knows exactly how to put the focus where it needs to be.
Simon Greer’s non-naturalistic set is a clever, evocative space, which Butel uses extremely well, with great support from the rest of the creative team (lighting by Ross Graham, costumes by Lucetta Stapleton and choreography by Amy Campbell).
Samantha Dodemaide as Violet. Photo: Grant Leslie
With her expressive face and voice, Dodemaide gives a radiant performance as Violet, capturing her prickly exterior and inner vulnerability. She manages to make the character’s deluded naivety believable and has a lovely, shy smile that lights up the stage.
Luisa Scrofani and Damien Bermingham are moving in flashback scenes between the young Violet and her father. Danielsen and Conrad give warm, appealing, believable performances as Monty and Flick, Dash Kruck nails the charlatan preacher, while Genevieve Lemon is a scene-stealer as an old Lady on the bus and a Memphis lady of the night.
The rest of the ensemble – Katie Elle Reeve, Linden Furnell, Ryan Gonzalez and Elenoa Rokobaro – all play their part beautifully and between them unleash some powerhouse vocals, while Musical Director Lucy Bermingham leads a tight six-piece band.
The lyrics in the opening number are a little hard to hear with everyone singing so loudly, but after that the sound (sound design by Jeremy Silver) is as good as I’ve heard it at the Hayes.
Violet is a simple, optimistic piece about self-acceptance and forgiveness. The ending won’t surprise but it touches the heart without being sentimental or corny.
Anna Volska, Maggie Dence, John Gaden, Peter Carroll and Barry Otto. Photo: Brett Boardman
Sure, it could easily have been another song in the event but it’s quite a moment when the veteran cast of Seventeen dances to Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off. Famously, it nearly didn’t happen. When rights to the song were denied at the last minute, director Anne-Louise Sarks took to Twitter. The campaign went viral with Swift tweeting her permission, gifting the production invaluable publicity.
Written by Matthew Whittet, Seventeen is a very sweet play. On the last day of high school, a small group of friends gather in the park to party the night away before they all go their separate ways and life changes forever. As they drink too much, dance and play truth and dare, anxieties, fears and secrets bubble to the surface.
It could be performed by young people but Whittet wrote it for 70-year olds, adding another level of poignancy to his examination of those uncertain years on the cusp of adulthood when you ponder who you are and what you hope to become.
And so we have a cast of esteemed older actors in the roles. There’s the loud, pushy ringleader Mike (John Gaden), his quieter, more sensitive best mate Tom (Peter Carroll) who is heading interstate to Melbourne University, Mike’s pretty, popular girlfriend Sue (Maggie Dence) and Sue’s brainy friend Edwina (Anna Volska) who rarely lets her hair down.
Joining them are the uninvited Ronny (Barry Otto), the weird, misfit kid that no-one likes, and Mike’s 14-year old sister Lizzy (played by the younger Genevieve Lemon) who won’t go home no matter how much they tell her to piss off.
The company spent time during rehearsals with some 17-year olds to get back in touch with a teenager’s energy, physicality and way of talking – and they all do a great job. Carroll and Gaden, in particular, climb the playground equipment and get their groove on with the ease and exuberance of people decades younger (movement by Scott Witt).
There are a few clunky moments as Whittet sends characters off stage to allow others to remain alone, which feel a bit engineered, but overall Sarks’ production is nicely staged on Robert Cousins’ playground set, with very clever costuming by Mel Page.
The performances are exceptional. After initial laughter at seeing septuagenarians larking around, saying “fucktard” and dancing to contemporary pop songs, we accept the convention as the actors draw us into the character’s emotional dilemmas.
There are lovely moments for all the characters, while Otto’s portrayal of the sad, alienated Ronny is heartbreaking.
The characters can’t believe how quickly their high school years have flown. Young people will doubtless relate to that, but Seventeen will probably speak loudest to people whose teenage years are long in the past and for whom the passing of time and sense of nostalgia will strike even more of a chord.
Whittet writes with love, tenderness and a gentle optimism. He doesn’t tell us what happens to the characters – which would arguably make for an even stronger play – but he leaves us hoping against hope that things will turn out well for all of them.
Seventeen runs until September 13. Bookings: www.belvoir.com.au or 02 9699 3444
A version of this review ran in the Sunday Telegraph on August 9
A week ago, the Hayes Theatre Co had its twice-yearly Coming Soon event at which they announced their program for the second half of this year. Although the company has only been in existence for 18 months, we’ve come to expect the Hayes to give a good launch – and so they did.
Hosted by David Campbell, one of the producers running the venue, the evening began with a lively video montage telling the Hayes story to date. Dedicated to the presentation of independent musical theatre and cabaret, it certainly illustrated what a great start the-little-venue-that-could has had.
Blasting off with Sweet Charity and The Drowsy Chaperone, other productions have included Blood Brothers, Miracle City, LoveBites, Next to Normal, new musicals Beyond Desire and Truth, Beauty and a Picture of You and the current production of Dogfight, as well as a cabaret festival and several Month of Sundays cabaret seasons. It hasn’t all been an unmitigated success but it’s been an exciting ride with some sensational high points, proving beyond doubt that the Hayes is an invaluable addition to Sydney’s musical theatre scene.
So what do they have in store for us for the rest of the year?
Cabaret Season 2015
Running from June 1 – 28, this year’s cabaret season includes 17 acts by artists including Marina Prior, Phil Scott, Amanda Harrison, Rob Mills, Tyran Parke, Mitchell Butel, Josie Lane and Damien Leith among others.
It begins on June 1 with Australiana: A Celebration of Australian Musical Theatre directed by Genevieve Lemon with Max Lambert as musical director. Featuring performers such as Nancye Hayes, Christy Sullivan and Patrice Tipoki, the concert will raise funds for the presentation of a new musical in November as part of the New Musicals Australia program, now being run by the Hayes.
The cast recording of Luckiest Productions’ acclaimed Miracle City, recorded at the Hayes, will be launched that night.
Phil Scott gave us a taste of his new cabaret show Reviewing the Situation, which he has written with Terence O’Connell and which he will perform as part of the cabaret season. Telling the story of Lionel Bart, composer of the musical Oliver! the character and concept would seem to be right in the pocket for Scott and one of the shows to look out for.
Akio!
The Hayes will host its first children’s show when it presents Blue Theatre Company’s Akio! – the story of a shy, young boy who is bullied at school and escapes by immersing himself in video games. Things get strange when he and Harumi, the girl of his dreams, are sucked into a video game. Akio! plays on July 4 & 5.
Heathers
Jaz Flowers sings Dead Girl Walking from Heathers. Photo: Noni Carroll
Trevor Ashley was on hand to discuss Heathers The Musical, which he will direct with a cast including Lucy Maunder and Jaz Flowers. A rock musical by Lawrence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy based on the cult 1988 film, Heathers opened off-Broadway last year. It tells the deliciously dark story of Veronica Sawyer, a brainy, beautiful, teenage misfit who manages to become part of The Heathers, a powerful clique of popular girls all named Heather at Westerberg High School. When Veronica falls in love with new kid J.D. and Heather Chandler, leader of the Heathers pack, says she will ruin Veronica’s social life, there will be hell to pay.
The New York Times described the show as a “rowdy, guilty-pleasure musical”. Ashley’s production for the Hayes is the first time the musical has been staged outside the US. Flowers raised the roof at the launch with her blistering rendition of the number Dead Girl Walking. Heathers plays July 19 – August 9.
Masterclass
A hit in Melbourne, Left Bauer Productions brings its acclaimed production of Terence McNally’s renowned play Masterclass to the Hayes. Inspired by Maria Callas’ 1971 visit to New York’s Juilliard School of Music, the production stars Maria Mercedes, who recently won a Green Room Award for her portrayal of Callas. The cast also includes Blake Bowden who sang Recondita Armonia from the opera Tosca at the launch. Fast becoming a regular at the Hayes, Campbell quipped: “we’re not going to let him go until he gets it right!”
Masterclass plays August 12 – 30.
High Society
Amy Lehpamer sings It’s All Right With Me from High Society. Photo: Noni Carroll
The Hayes Theatre Co will present Cole Porter’s classic musical High Society. It’s the first show presented solely by the Hayes rather than with one of the production companies involved with the theatre, or an external producer. Richard Carroll will serve as producer.
Amy Lehpamer will play Tracy Lord, the gorgeous, privileged but coolly pretentious young socialite, whose swelegant wedding plans are thrown into disarray when her ex-husband turns up as well as a pesky, undercover, tabloid reporter. Directed by Helen Dallimore, the cast will also include Bert LaBonte, Bobby Fox and Virginia Gay – or “Amy Lephamer, Bert LaBonte, Bobby Le Fox and Virginia Le Gay” as they will be known for the production, joked Dallimore.
Singing It’s All Right With Me, Lehpamer – who is on an incredible roll right now – showed why she’s been cast as Tracy Lord.
High Society plays from September 4.
Rent
Highway Run Productions (Toby Francis and Lauren Peters) will present Jonathan Larson’s rock musical Rent in association with the Hayes. Loosely based on La boheme, Rent is set in New York City’s East Village, over the course of a year in the early 1990s, where a group of impoverished artist friends struggle to live, love and create under the shadow of the HIV/AIDS epidemic The cast of Dogfight performed the song Seasons of Love from the show and set spines tingling.
Rent plays October 8 – November 1.
Violet
Mitchell Butel will direct the musical Violet with book and lyrics by Brian Crawley and music by Jeanine Tesori, which he described as his favourite Broadway show of the last 10 years. A road movie of a musical, it is based on a short story by Doris Betts called The Ugliest Pilgrim about a young, disfigured woman who embarks on a bus journey from North Carolina to Oklahoma to find the preacher she believes can heal her. The production will star Samantha Dodemaide who sang the numbers All to Pieces and Lay Down Your Head.
Violet plays November 2 – December 20.
I Might Take My Shirt Off
As part of A Month of Sundays, Dash Kruck will perform his cabaret show I Might Take My Shirt Off, which premiered at the Brisbane Powerhouse in February. Featuring original songs by Kruck and composer Chris Perren, Kruck performed a short extract from the show. He plays Lionel, a timid flooring salesman and cabaret virgin struggling to cope with a relationship break-up, who finds himself on stage when his German therapist Grizelda pushes him into doing a cabaret show as a way to express himself. On the basis of the launch taster, it’s a very funny evening.
I Might Take My Shirt Off plays on September 20 & 27 and on October 11.
Neglected Musicals
Nicholas Hammond and David Campbell discuss Neglected Musicals’ Dear World. Photo: Noni Carroll
Neglected Musicals will present Jerry Herman’s Dear World, directed by Nicholas Hammond. Based on Jean Giraudoux’s play The Madwoman of Chaillot, Hammond described the 1969 musical as “25 years ahead of its time”. The Broadway production, he said, was over-produced; as a small production, he believes it works a dream. The staged reading will feature Genevieve Lemon and Simon Burke, with Max Lambert as musical director. Dear World will be presented on August 3.
It was also announced that the Hayes has launched TALK through its website, which consists of regular podcasts and a series of editorials by Daily Review arts writer/reviewer Ben Neutze about musical theatre and cabaret.
All up, it’s an impressive line-up from one of the exciting companies in town.
Full details of the Hayes Theatre Co season can be found on its website: www.hayestheatre.com.au
The Nick Enright Songbook published by Currency Press
Last night, I tore myself away from the Cricket World Cup Final (tough call) to attend the launch of The Nick Enright Songbook published by Currency Press. Hosted by Darlinghurst Theatre Company at the Eternity Playhouse, it was a lovely, warm event with performances and fond reminiscences from several of his collaborators and former students, among other artists.
As well as a playwright and screenwriter, Enright – who died 12 years ago today – collaborated on many Australian musicals. The best known is The Boy From Oz for which he wrote the book but he was also a gifted lyricist.
The publication brings together 50 of the best songs from ten musicals for which he wrote the lyrics, with music by five composers. These include The Venetian Twins, Variations and Summer Rain written with composer Terence Clarke, Buckley’s! with Glenn Henrich, Orlando Rourke with Alan John, The Betrothed, Mary Bryant and The Good Fight with David King, and Miracle City with Max Lambert.
Miracle City was produced last year by the Hayes Theatre Co, winning two Sydney Theatre Awards: Best Performance by a Female Actor in a musical for Blazey Best and Best Musical Direction for Lambert. A cast recording is on the way and Currency Press is publishing the show’s book.
The Nick Enright Songbook also includes two numbers from On the Wallaby – Enright’s play with music – one of which has music by Enright himself, and a cabaret song written with Lambert. Composer and academic Peter Wyllie Johnson edited the book and wrote the commemorative foreword.
Ian Enright introduced last night’s launch, recalling that his brother wrote 13 musicals and 250 songs.
Clarke, Lambert and Henrich were on hand to chat about their different ways of working with Enright and to play several of their songs, while performers including Jay James-Moody, Genevieve Lemon, Margi de Ferranti and Anthony Harkin among others sang a selection of them.
Lemon said that she had recently been to a school concert and hoped that school libraries will acquire or be given the book so that the school children are able to discover and sing some of his songs at such events.
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Choir performed a beautifully arranged version of Sail Away from Mary Bryant, which was very moving, and Eddie Perfect, who was taught by Enright at WAAPA, sang a number he wrote (in 15 minutes between lectures) called Someone Like You as a tribute to Enright immediately after being told of his death.
The evening was a reminder of what an intelligent, skilled, sensitive and witty lyricist Enright was.
The foyer bar at the Eternity Playhouse is called Nick’s, named after Enright. The Enright Family is supporting Darlinghurst Theatre Company to stage three Enright plays over three years. The partnership began last year with a production of Daylight Saving and continues this year with Good Works.
Ian Enright said last night that he’d like to see one of Enright’s musicals being staged there. Let’s hope.
The Nick Enright Songbook (RRP $49.94) retails from all good bookstores and online at www.currency.com.au
Marcus Graham and Alan Dukes. Photo: Brett Boardman
Waves of laughter swept through the opening night audience at Sydney Theatre Company’s riotously funny production of Noises Off.
Michael Frayn’s 1982 comic masterpiece is a mind-bogglingly clever feat of construction. Add to that Julie Lynch’s gloriously OTT, psychedelic 70s costumes (which drew applause of their own) and some superb comic performances, and you have a night of laugh-out-loud mayhem.
The farce-within-a farce (which comes with a very funny program-within-a-program) follows a third-rate company of actors as they tour the English provinces with a lame bedroom farce called Nothing On.
Frayn has peopled Noises Off with a rum bunch. There’s the show’s backer Dotty Otley (Genevieve Lemon), a one-time “name” who is playing the housekeeper Mrs Clackett and having an affair with Nothing On’s temperamental leading man, the younger Garry Lejeune (Josh McConville); the somewhat vacant Brooke Ashton (Ash Ricardo), a blonde bombshell who keeps losing her contact lenses and who is having a fling with the philandering director Lloyd Dallas (Marcus Graham); Belinda Blair (Tracy Mann) who tries to keep things on an even keel but loves a good gossip; an elderly dipsomaniac (Ron Haddrick); and the morose, anxious Frederick Fellowes (Alan Dukes) who needs to be given acting motivations for every move his character makes.
Getting/keeping the show on the road are the timid but conscientious assistant stage manager Poppy Norton-Taylor (Danielle King) who is also involved with the director Lloyd, and the sleep-deprived stage manager/general dog’s body Tim Allgood (Lindsay Farris).
Over the course of three acts, we watch the same section of Nothing On as the production gradually disintegrates.
In Act I we see the disastrous dress rehearsal. Act II takes place at a matinee a month later when things are beginning to go wrong – the twist being that it’s shown from backstage. Act III takes place at the end of the tour when hostilities between the actors are spilling onto the stage and everything that could go wrong does.
Act I feels a little slow as Frayn sets everything up but from there on the play is like a runaway train.
The unfolding chaos requires absolute precision – which it gets in Jonathan Biggins’ very fine production, staged on Mark Thompson’s handsome, suitably old-fashioned set complete with the requisite eight doors. The set then spins to show the Spartan backstage area.
Lynch’s costumes are a delight: patchwork bell bottom jeans, patterned flares, clinging polyester shirts, frocks with bold geometric designs and platform boots among other wonderfully colourful outfits.
Josh McConville and Genevieve Lemon. Photo: Brett Boardman
Biggins’ has elicited priceless comic performances across the board from his excellent cast but McConville is an absolute standout as Lejeune, his daredevil physicality drawing gasps. Lemon is also a hoot, while Graham is “faded charm” to a tee as the droll, exasperated director.
Beneath all the hilarity there is a dark sense of the absurd and the creeping terror of things spiraling beyond our control. We laugh uproariously but we can’t help but feel for the characters, trapped in an existential theatrical nightmare, much of it of their own making.
Sydney will soon have a theatre named after Nancye Hayes (the former Darlinghurst Theatre). Now, it has a theatre bar named after the late, much-missed Australian playwright Nick Enright.
Last night, Darlinghurst Theatre Company and the Enright family hosted a wonderful event in the foyer at the newly opened Eternity Playhouse where friends and colleagues of Enright’s, including Nancye Hayes, gathered to celebrate the news that the foyer bar will be known as Nick’s Bar.
Enright’s brother Ian also announced that, over the next three years, the Enright family is supporting Darlinghurst Theatre Company to produce three plays by the renowned Australian playwright, starting with Daylight Saving in 2014.
Enright, who died in 2003 at age 52 of a melanoma, was a dearly loved man of the theatre. A prolific writer for film, television and the stage, he was also an actor, director and teacher who was Head of Acting at NIDA between 1983 and 1984.
His playwriting credits include On the Wallaby, Daylight Saving, St James Infirmary, Mongrels, A Property of the Clan, The Quartet from Rigoletto, Blackrock, Good Works, Spurboard and A Man with Five Children. Together with Justin Monjo he also adapted Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet for the stage.
He wrote the book and lyrics for many musicals including The Venetian Twins, Variations and Summer Rain with composer Terrence Clarke; The Betrothed, Mary Bryant and The Good Fight with David King; and Miracle City with Max Lambert. He also wrote the book for The Boy From Oz, which went on to become a hit on Broadway.
Enright co-wrote the screenplay for Lorenzo’s Oil, which earned him an Academy Award nomination.
Last night’s event included performances and talks by friends of Enright’s who remembered a man who was warm and witty, wrote comedy and lyrics with effortless ease, and was also a great mentor to many young artists. David Marr (who runs Enright’s estate with Ian Enright) also recalled the playwright’s “ferocious” but insightful editing of his biography of Patrick White.
Enright wasn’t a great drinker himself, said Marr, but understood that red wine and conversation go together so the naming of a bar after him was an apt tribute.
Marr was the MC – a role he said that we didn’t need (given that everyone in the room knew each other) but had to have because Enright loved the formalities of the theatre.
Genevieve Lemon opened the show with “I’ll Hold On” from Miracle City – a heart-breakingly beautiful song, beautifully sung, bringing back great memories of the show, which surely deserves to be seen again soon.
Lynne Pierse and Doug Hansell performed “Love Has Lousy Timing” from the first version of Summer Rain, which was subsequently cut from the show, Paul Capsis sang Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day”, Jay James-Moody gave us the ever-popular comedy number Jindyworoback from The Venetian Twins with composer Terry Clarke at the piano and Tony Sheldon brought the night to a moving end with “If I Don’t Have You” from Variations (recently given a concert performance by Neglected Musicals).
Sandy Gore did the honours in officially opening “Nick’s Bar”. During a lively, touching speech she revealed that Enright had been so frustrated and depressed at his plays not being picked up and staged that he vowed that he would stop playwriting if Daylight Saving (which he wrote for her in 1989 after Marr suggested he tackled a comedy) was not a success – and she believed him. Happily it sold out and Enright’s career took off.
Mark Kilmurry directs Daylight Saving for the Darlo next year (October 30 – November 30).
“If you need any assistance on the mother, it’s my mother and I can tell you how it’s done,” said Marr.
Hopefully, Daylight Saving is just the first of many Enright revivals to come.
Marr also paid tribute to remarkable Sydney pop artist Martin Sharp who died on Sunday. The Eternity Playhouse is named after Arthur Stace who famously chalked the word “Eternity” on Sydney’s pavements for 30 years after hearing a sermon at the Burton Street Tabernacle now converted into the theatre. Sharp included the word in several works including his 1977 poster Eternity Haymarket! and also illuminated it on the Sydney Harbour Bridge for the New Year’s Eve celebrations leading into 2000.
Jo Litson: Scene and Heard 