Skip to main content

You Know We Belong Together

Edinburgh International Festival

The Lyceum

Four stars


Life is one big soap opera for Julia Hales in her autobiographical show-and-tell, which finally arrives in Edinburgh after the COVID pandemic prevented it from visiting, not once, but twice. Even now it has arrived, the drama keeps on coming, as Clare Watson’s production for Australia’s Black Swan State Theatre Company had to be rejigged due to five of the seven-strong cast being struck down by the virus, necessitating their appearance on film rather than in person.

 

This doesn’t stop the irrepressible Hales, who weaves her personal story of life with Down syndrome alongside her life long obsession with Home and Away, the sunkissed Australian soap still going strong after thirty-four years. Hales does this with considerable charm, as she invites us all to share in her story in designer Tyler Hill’s mock-up of the diner in Summer Bay, Home and Away’s fictional town where anything can and usually does happen. She even creates her own character for the show along with a set of self scripted dramatic plot twists.

 

Beyond TV drama, Hale and her cast tap into the collective experience of the Down syndrome community, and how it remains marginalised. In her quest for love, Hales is joined onstage by Joshua Bott, the only one of the cast lucky enough to have not gone down with COVID. Members of the audience are also co-opted to become part of her extended family, fictional or otherwise. On screen, Patrick Carter, Tina Fielding, Mark Junor, Melissa Junor and Lauren Marchbank join the fold with similar openness.

 

Co-written by Hales with Watson and Finn O’Branagain, there is a refreshing honesty to Hales’ story, which is driven with wit and occasional dance routines rather than polemic to become a call to arms emboldened by the power of love rather than conflict. With Michael Carmody’s video design utilised to the max, it also unintentionally shows off how screen-based work can become a vital part of the theatrical experience in a post lockdown world. Even better,Hales gives herself a happy ending. A life in Summer Bay surely awaits.


The Herald, August 28th 2022

 

ends

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Billy Elliot The Musical

Edinburgh Playhouse Five stars A big National Coal Board sign looms large at the opening of Lee Hall and Elton John's decade-old musical stage version of Hall and director Stephen Daldry's hit turn of the century film. In a tale of one little boy's liberation as a dancer against the backdrop of the 1980s miners strike, however, the Durham Miners banner and the 'Save Our Community' sash held aloft matter more. It is this call to arms that forms the heart of Daldry's production, as Billy becomes a potty-mouthed beacon of hope in a situation where picket line, thin blue line and chorus line rub uneasily up against each other. Given such a context, there is bound to be some pretty grown-up stuff going on here, be it the institutionalised homophobia in Billy's village, the class war going on within it, or Billy's grieving for his dead mother that drives his every move. And, as so magnificently choreographed by Peter Darling, what moves they are. Watch...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
1 comment
Read more

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more