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.
Me fail? I fly! 