Re: Theatre play: Let the Sunshine (2009)
Thank you very much
-Ich bin keine Signatur ich putz hier nur-
Thank you very much
-Ich bin keine Signatur ich putz hier nur-
The pictures are just great! Thanks, keksle!
Ok, and here comes a clip!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xxaNopmTzc
Oh my god... He is so cute
He is really a fantastic actor....
I can´t await to see him on stage one day.....
-Ich bin keine Signatur ich putz hier nur-
Tour dates of the Play:
LET THE SUNSHINE TOUR:
The Street Theatre, Canberra
7 July 11 July 2009
Bookings (02) 6247 1223 www.thestreet.org.au
Q Theatre, Penrith
14 July 18 July 2009
Bookings (02) 4723 7600 www.jspac.com.au
Manning Entertainment Centre, Taree
21 July 22 July 2009
Bookings (02) 4723 7600
Geelong Performing Arts Centre
5 August 8 August 2009
Bookings (03) 5225 1200 www.gpac.org.au
I couldn't take my eyes from him.
I went back a few times just to see him and hear his voice.
Reviewed by Jason Blake
May 16, 2009
Ensemble Theatre, May 14. Until July 4
William Zappa peruses the pieces of what should be an IKEA bookshelf. Staring at the components, the wily actor pulls a face that says "well, we've all been here, haven't we?" David Williamson's Let The Sunshine notches up its first chuckle in less than 30 seconds without a word being spoken.
Those easy chuckles keep coming - for the first half of the play at least - as Williamson slots together the pre-drilled components of a domestic comedy that sees piece A (Toby, 60, in disgrace), joined at a loosening right angle to piece B (partner Ros, a successful publisher), clamped to ideologically opposite pieces C and D (property millionaire couple Natasha and Ron) using the bond developed between Toby and Ros's struggling rock musician son Rick and the fiercely competitive corporate lawyer Emma, only child of Natasha and Ron.
Director Sandra Bates has a cast of highly capable players at her disposal and they work hard to lift this sextet of bloodless caricatures off the page. Zappa creates a likeable curmudgeon from Williamson's idea of a Pilger-like crusader self-exiled in Noosa after one of the sources in his latest documentary is outed as a fraud. Georgie Parker is effortlessly charming as his flimsily outlined partner, Ros, and while they only have one note to play Kate Raison (as the brittle Natasha) and Andrew McFarlane (the odious Ron) are entertainingly rendered.
Amid all the blazing obviousness, it's Williamson's scenes for the younger characters - Emma (Emma Jackson) and Rick (Justin Stewart Cotta) that stand out. Jackson navigates Emma's abrupt character shifts very smartly and Cotta is convincing as the struggling rock muso, even though the playwright's grasp of the music industry is hopelessly vague.
Williamson's settings are similarly sketchy with Noosa defined in a glib cultural shorthand ($6 coffees, showy gold jewellery, sub-par cocktail bars) that almost anyone could come up with based on hearsay alone.
There's no doubting that Williamson's work will always be welcome at the Ensemble. This play's scale, its themes and its humour are a perfect fit. Even so, some will be disappointed by the stiffness and lack of invention in what is a much-anticipated return to the stage.
Let The Sunshine also plays at the Q Theatre, Penrith, July 14-18.
Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/arts/arts-reviews/let-the-sunshine-review/2009/05/19/1242498743011.html
Let The Sunshine
by David Williamson
Ensemble Theatre (until July 4), subsequently touring to Penrith, Taree, Canberra and Geelong.
Two Noosa couples mix socially without much liking each other.
The men, a radical film-maker exiled to Noosa after a discredited documentary, and a white sandshoe developer - the women, old school acquaintances, a year apart at school, at odds thanks to book club politics.
Add their apparently incompatible 30-something off-spring, struggling muso and hard-nosed rising corporate lawyer and mix the gene pool.
There’s a touch of Romeo and Juliet (in this case Rick and Emma) about David Williamson’s new play. No sword fights, though, and it ends happily enough, though perhaps a little too neatly.
Not the oft-yearned-for biting early Williamson satire of The Removalists, Don’s Party or The Club – Let The Sunshine is the continuation of the commercial domestic / social comedy genre David Williamson has been simply entertaining audiences with over recent years. David Williamson’s acute observation of human behavior makes comedies of this sort audience-pleasers, with regular glimmers, and the accompanying laughter, of character or situation recognition.
Director Sandra Bates and her cast ensure a slick, lively representation - William Zappa, the depressive documentary maker, Georgie Parker, spirited, yet long-suffering as his wife, Andrew McFarlane, the unapologetic, testosterone driven developer, and Kate Raison, quietly in control as his wife.
Their off-spring; sharp-tongued Emma (Emma Jackson), initially a vulture of a corporate lawyer, and struggling musician / pub glass collector Rick (Justin Stewart Cotta), seem an unlikely pair at first, but there is chemistry both in the characters and the performances. Early on, the strident, unremitting Emma is convincingly dreadful - when she sheds parental and career expectations for motherhood, she becomes the play’s most engaging character - convincing and sympathetic. Justin Stewart Cotta is credible and believable as Rick.
Cinematic writing, short scenes which seem to cross-fade, effectively uses Graham Maclean’s single setting for all the play’s locations across the twin locations of Noosa and Sydney.
Lots of human truths, Williamson wit if not bite, and perhaps a little too conveniently tied up. Still, diverting, easily digested entertainment.
Neil Litchfield
Let the Sunshine | Ensemble Theatre
Written by Jack Teiwes
Friday, 05 June 2009
Left - (front) Justin Stewart Cotta and Emma Jackson, (rear) Kate Raison, Andrew McFarlane and Georgie Parker. Cover - William Zappa, Justin Stewart Cotta and Georgie Parker. Photos - Steve Lunam
Ever since David Williamson began saying that he would stop writing plays and yet in short order proceeded to keep generating new scripts, I have followed each new work with interest, keen to see what kind of ideas have compelled him to keep reemerging from this would-be retirement. As such, I would like to think that I did not enter Let the Sunshine with any particular cynicism, but nevertheless found myself thinking early on that this was shaping to be another example of what many (if not always necessarily myself) have criticized of the last decade or more of Williamsons output for being: light, well-crafted, amusing yet predictable, and only addressing the lives of the upper-middle to wealthy classes. Its an exaggerated view to be sure, but one I have often heard said by others with no small measure of eyerolling distain, as though to say well, here we go again.
Im pleased to disappoint the cynics.
As there has already been a bit of an argy-bargy elsewhere in the press about Williamson taking potshots at the STC around the opening of this production, I dont wish to engage here in the issue of Williamsons place in the current theatre scene, or debate his comments on the merits of conventional storytelling versus directorial showboating. Rather, lets talk about this play itself and its merits.
The show does start out a little humdrum, to be honest. There are some good laughs, certainly Williamson could never be accused of having lost his touch when it comes to writing brilliant one-liners but at first it all did seem a tad obvious, you feel that you know exactly where its all going. And in a sense youd be right
but also very wrong indeed.
Essentially the play concerns two Baby Boomer couples living in Noosa who come from opposite ends of the spectrum. On the one hand there is Ros from the Sydney literati, married to the grumpy John Pilger-esque documentarian Toby, a dyed-in-the-wool crusading lefty who has made his career out of exposing governments, corporations and the ills of capitalism. Then we have Natasha, spendthrift trophy wife to Ron, a charming and chauvinistic alpha-male property developer whose aggressive overdevelopment of the Queensland coast has made him rich, and precisely the sort of right-wing tycoon that Toby despises. The two wives know each other from high school (although they were not friends), but the husbands have a total clash of beliefs, class and politics, so its quite evident this foursome is not going to get on, but then their adult children come to visit and things really take a turn.
Each couple has produced a flawed child that, in a familiarly Williamson fashion, are the notionally logical outcomes of their respective ideologies when applied to parenting. Ros and Tobys son Rick is a struggling (you might say failed) musician who barely supports himself working in a pub and is riddled with a low self-esteem, his loving follow your dream upbringing having instilled him with inadequate drive to pursue his ambitions to the fullest. Conversely, Ron and Natashas daughter Emma has been brought up with the message that being top dog is the only acceptable option and has thus become a ferocious corporate lawyer, already wealthy in her own right but beginning to fray at the edges from the punishing workload and disillusioning soullessness of her profession, not to mention the much-suppressed ticking of her biological clock. These two offspring have both reached their thirties and found that something in their lives is wanting.
Naturally, given their total clash of values, personalities and stations in life, Emma and Rick instantly dislike each other, and with even more intensity than the enmity between their respective parents. And, of course, in very short order they fall into bed together. You see it coming a mile off, but its what happens next that becomes interesting.
While there are no huge dramatic twists or shocking revelations, the play nevertheless becomes quite an engrossing character drama as this pair not only stay together, but get married, go through some unexpected changes in circumstance, and have a baby. So as the two couples children change and grow together and a mutual grandchild enters the picture, the antagonistic Baby Boomers are forced to begin to accept each other, but it is not a smooth road for any of those involved.
Perhaps what makes this story so interesting is not only the engaging characters which are well drawn, if a little straightforward but particularly the themes that run through the play concerning how ideologies get passed down to new generations and yet the world moves on regardless. Taking place over two years and set against the backdrop of the end of Howard, the rise of Rudd, and the beginning of the Global Financial Crisis while referencing back to the Summer of Love, we see how both the disillusioned Toby and Ros have bitterly come to accept the death of all their 1970s idealism in a world increasingly consumed by greed and inhumanity, while the blinkered, arrogant Ron and oblivious Natasha are faced with a more current repudiation of their own worldview via the meltdown of the free market.
There are strong performances from all the cast, especially the highly sympathetic Georgie Parker as Ros, Emma Jackson as the volatile yet endearing Emma, and William Zappa, pitch-perfect as always, in the atypically understated role of Toby. With six engaging actors and Williamsons progressively absorbing script, the production achieves some strong drama and plenty of laugh-out-loud comedy, which more than adequately compensates for some curiously uneven direction by Sandra Bates (the scene-changing blackouts became quite tedious) and a serviceable but awkward set by Graham MacLean.
Let the Sunshine is a play about Boomers and Gen-Xers, and will hopefully find an audience amongst other generations as well, for its look into the lives and creeds of those at opposite ends of the ideological spectrum and how such people can be brought together is undeniably an intriguing one.
Ensemble Theatre
LET THE SUNSHINE
by David Williamson
Director: Sandra Bates
Venue: Ensemble Theatre, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli, NSW, 2061
Dates: Previews: 7 13 May, opens Thurs 14 May, plays to 4 July, 2009
Times: TueFri 8.15pm, Sat 5pm & 8.30pm, Sun 5pm, Thurs 11am
Tickets: $39 - $63 (booking charges may apply)
Bookings: 02 9929 0644 or www.ensemble.com.au
LET THE SUNSHINE TOUR:
The Street Theatre, Canberra
7 July 11 July 2009
Bookings (02) 6247 1223 www.thestreet.org.au
Q Theatre, Penrith
14 July 18 July 2009
Bookings (02) 4723 7600 www.jspac.com.au
Manning Entertainment Centre, Taree
21 July 22 July 2009
Bookings (02) 4723 7600
Geelong Performing Arts Centre
5 August 8 August 2009
Bookings (03) 5225 1200 www.gpac.org.au
Source: http://www.australianstage.com.au/reviews/sydney/let-the-sunshine--ensemble-theatre-2607.html