Tag Archives: Colin Friels

2025 End of Year list 2: Theatre

Posted on 2 Jan 2026 | Leave a comment

I went to the theatre seventeen times this year, counting a National Theatre Live screening. Mostly I was accompanied by the Emerging Artist, but as luck woUld have it she was home with a painful post-surgery foot for the play that gets the Jonathan Shaw Award for the year:

The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters at the Belvoir Street Theatre, directed by Eamon Flack, with Colin Friels in the title role. From the beginning this Lear was in crisis. Colin Friels somehow communicated that he was dividing up the kingdom, not on some weird whim, but because he had a sense of impending cognitive and physical incapacity. That he (the actor, not the character) collapsed on another evening, leading to the cancellation of that performance, is perhaps an indication that he was drawing on his own felt experience.

Of the shows we saw together, we agreed on this list of The Best, in alphabetical order:

Classic Penguins, in which Garry Starr (not his real name), wearing webbed feet, a ruffed collar and not even that much for some parts of the show, took us on a tour of Penguin Classic paperbacks, performing mostly silly skits based on their titles. For Around the World in 80 Days, for instance, he spun around while the audience counted to eighty. I laughed a lot, I cried, I did as I was told and helped the naked Garry crowd surf.

Jacky by Declan Furber Gillick, directed by Mark Wilson and starring the wonderful Guy Simon, was a Melbourne production transported to Belvoir Street as part of the Sydney Festival.

The Visitors by Jane Harrison, which we saw as part of the Clancestry Festival of first Nations arts in Brisbane/Meganjin. Representatives of the local clans meet on the headlands of what is now Sydney Harbour and debate how to respond to the fleet of ships that is coming through the heads.

The Wrong Gods written and co-directed by S Shakthidharan (his co-director was Hannah Goodwin). Everything about this was superb – the set the music, the dancing, the writing, the acting. Wonderful theatre , and a serious look at the devastating encroachment of capitalism on Indian village life.

William Yang: Milestone, in which one of Australia’s living treasures marks his eightieth birthday with a slide show and his undimmed gift for storytelling. We saw it as part of the Sydney Festival.

Next, television!

I  saw most of these shows on Gadigal land. I wrote this blog post on the  Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung land. I acknowledge their Elders past and present, and welcome any First Nations readers.

Leave a comment

Posted in Theatre

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Celebrity spotting

Posted on 17 Nov 2025 | 1 comment

This post first appeared on 25 August 2004. I’ve retrieved it from the earlier version of this blog because I’ve just written a little stanza recording my wildly inaccurate memory of the incident it describes.

In Balmain after work tonight, I witnessed an impromptu performance by Colin Friels.

A traffic cop was strolling along Darling Street checking the parking meters, notebook in hand. I had just seen a woman illegally parked outside Oportos toot her horn to alert her chicken-buying companion, and then back out just as the notebook-bearer was making his shark-like approach.

About ten metres further along, I walked past the talented Mr Friels at the exact moment he spotted danger. He turned to the little girl beside him, say eight years old, and said, in rich theatrical tones that reminded me of The Children’s Hour of the 1950s: ‘Come on. There’s a man with a yellow coat, and he’s going to do dreadful things.’ And the two of them set off in a modified sprint, plastic bags swinging.

As far as I could tell they made it to their car in time – the last I saw of them they were dodging around a large truck that was turning into one of those narrow streets that run off Darling, easily overtaking their public-revenue-collecting nemesis. ‘And no paparazzi in sight,’ I said to the smiling woman who was inserting coins in a meter near me.

1 Comment

Posted in Retrieved from 'Family Life'

Tagged

November verse 7. After King Lear at the Belvoir

Posted on 17 Nov 2025 | 7 comments

Last night I saw Colin Friels in the lead role of The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear and his Three Daughters at the Belvoir Street Theatre, directed by Eamon Flack. I don’t know the play well enough to tell if they fiddled with the text, but apart from the regendering of one character that created eddies of confusion, it’s a brilliant production that spoke to me powerfully. An interesting side note is that Goneril is played by Friels’s daughter Charlotte Friels.

So here’s a little verse:

November verse 6: After seeing King Lear at the Belvoir

Once in Balmain I saw Colin
skip with Charlotte hand in hand
up Darling Street, past shopping, strolling
midday crowds. You'll understand: 
that father and his preschool daughter
provoked our wistful semi-laughter.
Would like them we all could play
with all self-consciousness at bay!
Last night once more they were together,
she the firstborn, he King Lear.
She flattered him, then with a sneer
she drove him out. The aging father
cursed her. After all that rage
do they still skip once they're offstage?

Added later: After I’d written that and pressed ‘Publish’ I saw that I have mentioned Colin Friels a couple of times previously on this blog. In August 2005 I actually blogged about the incident that features in the poem. I discovered that my memory of the incident differs wildly from what I recorded at the time. I have retrieve that blog post. It’s at this link.

I have written this blog post on the land of Gadigal and Wangal of the Eora nation who, as far as I know, never had deadly battles over inheritance of land. I acknowledge Elders past and present of all those clans, and welcome any First Nations readers.

7 Comments

Posted in LoSoRhyMo, Theatre

Tagged , , ,