WHEN Newcastle director and actor Stewart McGowan decided to stage the renowned play Love Letters, which has a man and woman reading the letters they sent to each other for 50 years after becoming attracted in their early years as school students, he was delighted with the number of people who wanted to audition for the roles.
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So, instead of picking just one actor to play each character, he chose two males - Peter Oliver and Derek Fisher - and three females - Tracey Owens, Vanessa MacArthur, and Tracey Gordon.
As the play is one of the short-season works being staged at Newcastle Theatre Company's Lambton venue, with four performances between February 24 and 27, some of the actors will just do the play once. But, as Stewart McGowan notes, they are quite happy about that as they are on stage for 90 minutes, delivering the characters' words in very different ways that bring out their natures and the time of their lives, with a short 10-minute interval in the middle of the play.
Love Letters, which was written by renowned American playwright A.R. Gurney, whose stage works grew out of things he'd heard people say or seen them doing, has been a global hit since its New York premiere in 1988.
Newcastle Theatre Company decided to put together a production so that it could take the place of any show that had to be cancelled if the COVID-19 virus struck one or more cast members. And the four-day season will give theatregoers a chance to see how good the story and characters are.
The opening night performance on Wednesday, February 24, at 8pm, will have Peter Oliver and Tracey Owens as the love letter writers, Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, with Derek Fisher and Tracey Owens in the roles on Friday, February 26, at 8pm, Peter Oliver and Vanessa MacArthur in a 2pm matinee on Saturday, February 27, and Derek Fisher and Tracey Gordon in an 8pm evening show that day. Tickets for the show, $25, can be booked by emailing newrep@bigpond.net.au or ringing 4952 4958 between 3pm and 6pm Monday to Friday.
NTC is also hoping to tour the production.
Love Letters was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1990 for the best production in the previous year, something that rarely happens when a play has just two characters. But their verbal discussions of hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats in their separated lives have watchers thinking about similar issues in their own lives and relationships. Melissa, for example, marries someone else while Andrew is overseas fighting in World War II, and when he returns he also weds a different woman while doing a university law course that leads to him becoming a successful attorney. And when unexpected things do arise they don't always handle them properly, with their relationships with family members and friends often changing or ending.
Stewart McGowan notes that the playwright A.R. Gurney has put a lot of instructions in the pages following the script. "There can be no baby talk. You can't make big faces. Melissa can't drink from her water glass a lot, or people will think she's a drunk," are among his critical words..
McGowan also points out that the play shows how we get to know people, something that many other plays avoid doing. And many actors have been intent on making that come through. On Valentine's Day in 1992, for example, Charlton Heston and his wife, Lydia Clarke, performed the play in a Pennsylvania theatre to show people how important people's relationships are and should be handled. And, in 1994, Liza Minnelli and Desi Arnaz Jr appeared in a benefit performance of the play in Miami to raise money to help troubled people.
IN THE NEWS:
INVISIBLE TOUCH
NEWCASTLE'S Civic Theatre will present on Thursday, February 18, at 8pm, Invisible Stone, a one-off art, sound, and dance experience as part of the New Annual Festival. The work is a collaboration between e4444e, lovedavid, and Skip Willcox, with the team noting that it shows "Things immaterial with so much potential".
This unique collaborative work created by the trio journeys into what it means to see and become, to hold weight and let go, and to act out of fear and out of love.
Responding mutually to each other, this experimental stage production blends sonic compositions with a distinct visual environment - physically and digitally.
Choreographer Skip Willcox navigates the space in a range of divisions; sometimes symbiotically, sometimes extrapolated and unconfined.
Together with dancer Allie Graham, their movements are intimate and morphic; Skip interprets the bodily and out of body experiences. The becoming and the holding are just some of the invisibles within ourselves.
The team point out that "We pose the question of what's beyond us? What is within us?
So much potential lives in the shadows, between the edges, under the skin - how can we observe this? A shiver with no chill, a lump in the throat, a premonition. Things immaterial existing within and without; real because they are there, invisible because they are not."
e4444e (also known as Romy Church) finds the term 'experimental' tough to grapple with. It seems to him that most electronically-based musicians get pigeonholed with this generic label these days.
"I feel like experimental now implies a sound, or a type of music.
"I think it used to point towards people being free with themselves."
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