Sondheim Trivia Night

 

In a somewhat belated follow-up to my last post, here are a selection of snaps from last Friday evening’s Stephen Sondheim Trivia Night, a fundraiser for Watch This, “Australia’s first and only Sondheim repertory company”, of which Shane Jones and I are proud patrons.

Aside from Shane and I, our table comprised Melbourne Gallery Director, Stephen McLaughlan and Phillip (I never learned his surname), who we met for the first time that night. If I do say so myself, we made rather a good team. We didn’t win any prizes - not even close - but we didn’t disgrace ourselves either. The main thing was, we had an absolute ball. 

Pictured above, L-R: Phillip, Shane, Sonya Suares, myself and Stephen McLaughlan. Sonya is the Chairperson, Founder and former Artistic Director of Watch This. The outfit she is wearing was the subject of one of the trivia questions posed by Quiz Master, Nick Simpson-Deeks. We were asked to identify the Watch This production she wore it in. That was a question I could answer with some certainty. She wore it as Amy in Company. I ought to know - I saw it three times! She was brilliant in it, as was Nick, in the central role of Bobby.

Pictured above: Mel Hillman and Dean Drieberg, Co-artistic Directors of Watch This.

Pictured above: Nick Simpson-Deeks, Design and Communications, (and leading performer in many a fine Watch This production). 

Foreground, above: fellow trivia contestant, John O’May. A distinguished actor of many years’ standing, John played principal roles in  A Little Night Music and Into the Woods for the company. I’m a longtime admirer of his work, and dearly hope we’ll see him in future Watch This productions. 

Directly below: Watch This Co-Director Dean Drieberg made my evening when he told me that on my recommendation, during his recent trip to London, he managed to catch Old Friends, then in its last days, and loved it as much as I did. Like me (and no doubt, thousands of others during the show’s run), he was moved to tears when, at the very end, Bernadette Peters turned face to the images of Sondheim hovering over the stage (top photo, previous post) and sang Not a Day Goes By.    

Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim/Old Friends

The late, great Stephen Sondheim was born on this day in 1930.

This evening we are celebrating the occasion by attending a Sondheim Trivia Night, a fundraiser for Watch This, the Melbourne-based theatre company that for almost a decade has dedicated itself to performing his works. 

I still can’t believe my good fortune that my visit to London last year coincided with Old Friends,  a star-studded musical tribute to Sondheim that was performed at the Gielgud Theatre from September 2023 to early January 2024. Put simply, it was one of the finest theatrical productions I’ve ever seen. The top photo was taken from my seat on the night of the performance we attended.

I still remember my excitement the day I met my old friend Bev Murray in the West End to book our tickets at the theatre. 

Old Friends has recently been nominated for an Olivier Award, and deservedly so. 

During my stay I was also fortunate to attend a production of Sondheim’s Follies at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the instigation of Susan Verney, another old and very dear friend. It was a dazzling production, with brilliant choreography and stunning performances which completely belied the fact that we watching a student production. 

Sending much love to all my old friends in London. Who’s like us? Damn few.

Hey, old friend

Are you okay, old friend?

What do you say, old friend?

Are we or are we unique?

Time goes by

Everything else keeps changing

You and I

We get continued next week

Most friends fade

Or they don't make the grade

New ones are quickly made

And in a pinch, sure, they'll do

But us, old friend

What’s to discuss, old friend?

Here's to us

Who's like us?

Damn few 

- Stephen Sondheim, Old Friends, from Merrily We Roll Along (1981). 

Happy Birthday, Stephen Sondheim.

THE SUN SETS ON BACKSTORIES

After several extensions, all of them thwarted by lockdowns, Backstories, my solo show at Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, officially closes today.

Sunday, pictured above, takes its title from the song in the Pulitzer Prize winning musical drama, Sunday in the Park with George (1984, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine). The musical was inspired by the George Seurat painting, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-86). The song, Sunday, closes both its first and second acts. As some of you know, my partner Shane Jones and I are devotees of Sondheim’s work, as is Stephen McLaughlan. Accordingly, it seems doubly fitting to post the painting here, as a swansong to my own show. 

Stephen, Shane and I are all supporters of Watch This, a visionary Melbourne-based theatre company that specialises in Sondheim’s works. The company’s 2019 production of Sunday in the Park with George was unforgettable. I saw it twice and on both occasions, the song brought tears to my eyes.  

Coincidentally, Watch This held two preview events, including their 2019 season launch of Sunday in the Park with George at Stephen Mclaughlan Gallery. Pictured below is the company’s founder and first Artistic Director, Sonya Suares, who also co-directed the production. That’s Shane and I on the left in the following view. (Photos courtesy Sonya Suares via Stephen McLaughlan, reproduced with his kind permission).

We were delighted that Sonya Suares was able to join us at the gallery for the memorable Backstories Artist Celebration on Saturday afternoon, July 31, 2021. Sonya and I are pictured with Sunday in the last photo below. (Photo credit: Julie Keating). 

After several postponements, the next Watch This production, Into the Woods, will be performed early next year at Melbourne Meat Market, running from Saturday January 15 - Sunday January 23. While Sondheim’s extraordinary revisionist take on fairy tales didn’t directly inspire my own fairy tale-related works (including the anthology of feminist fairy tales, There was once…)  it certainly added fuel to the fire. For further information about Into the Woods, including performance dates and times, visit Watch This HERE.

Before heading for Melbourne to farewell Backstories (see previous post) I’d like to extend one last thank you to Stephen McLaughlan, Shane Jones, the many people who visited the exhibition and those who have acquired works. Against all the odds, “on an ordinary Sunday”,* Backstories is finally having its fairy tale ending.

Backstories concludes today at 5pm.

*From Stephen Sondheim’s lyric for Sunday. To see the song performed in the original production of Sunday in the Park with George, go HERE.

Pictured top: Deborah Klein, Sunday, 2020, acrylic on linen, 40.5 x 30.5 cm. Photo credit: Tim Gresham.

Adventures in Melbourne

Between 2 - 18 August, most roads led to MIFF venues, although my stimulating and productive Melbourne stay also set me on an unexpected path with a new series of works on paper. A recent bout of flu, from which I'm just emerging, has delayed this last post about my recent adventures in Melbourne, my first as a visitor, rather than as a resident.

The Plenary, situated on Melbourne's Docklands, was a first-time (and hopefully, last time) venue.  

The Plenary had all the charm of an airport lounge. Nobody I spoke to enjoyed going there.
Still, I'm rather proud of this early evening shot, taken after an afternoon of screenings.

English born director and screenwriter Peter Strickland was a MIFF guest and was
a refreshingly warm, engaging and down-to-earth speaker. I saw several of his films,
and by comparison, found the plots curiously distancing and off-putting and felt little sympathy
 - or any sense of connection for that matter - with his characters.

Below are 15 of my favourite films. (I tried unsuccessfully to limit the list to ten and could easily have added more):

God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya

Jinpa

Honeyland 

The Nightingale

And Then We Danced

House of Hummingbird

Ghost Town Anthology

Stitches

A Regular Woman

Ghost Tropic

Vai

Papicha

The Juniper Tree

Talking About Trees

The Swallows of Kabul

Complete details of the above can be found on my MIFF 2019 schedule HERE. I made several alterations to it during the course of the film festival: subtracting, adding and switching session times. An annoying fault in the MIFF app is that not all the changes are reflected in the final list. Adding further confusion, a special MIFF screening I attended late last year is also listed. Nevertheless, it's a record of sorts and I’m still thinking about many of the films I did see. The MIFF Travelling Showcase heads to Ballarat soon, and I hope to catch up with some that I missed.

My MIFF was sandwiched between two noteworthy theatrical events: the dazzling Everything’s Coming Up Sondheim  at Chapel Off Chapel on August 2 and Sunday in the Park With George at the Lawler Theatre, which we saw shortly after MIFF had ended. Stephen Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize winning musical drama, inspired by the pointillist artist George Seurat and his masterwork, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte, could not have been better served than by Watch This, the Melbourne-based company that specialises in his work. To my mind, no one does Sondheim better. Watch This finds the heart in his work like no other company I've seen. The entire cast, led by Nick Simpson-Deeks as George (pictured below) and Vidya Makan as Dot, his model, muse and lover, were sublime, as was every aspect of the production, which we saw twice. Over the years, I've seen other versions of Sunday in the Park With George, but this is the first time I've been moved to tears. On both occasions, I noticed several others discreetly dabbing their eyes. The sold-out Melbourne season was all too short. An interview with Sunday's co-director and Watch This founder Sonya Suares, is HERE. To read a review, go HERE.

Another highlight of my Melbourne sojourn was the Alexander Calder exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, which I caught just before it ended its long run. I absolutely loved this show and only wish I'd had a chance to visit earlier. Calder's sculptures and the mobiles with which he is most closely associated were well represented, but I was particularly enamoured of his wire sculptures.

The small hotel where I lived and worked for the duration of MIFF is nestled directly behind the grand, historic Windsor Hotel. On one particularly memorable occasion, Shane came to Melbourne for the day and took me out to dinner there. He is pictured below, admiring one of the paintings in the hotel's elegant foyer.

Directly below is an overview of the worktable in my hotel room at the close of MIFF. I'm continuing with the drawings back in Ballarat and will post updates in the near future.