Die Young and Have a Good-Looking Corpse

Jordie Lane refuses to be put in a box. After all, there is something irresistible about keeping your creative options open. 

Now in Melbourne, the 27 year-old Australian singer-songwriter has put his writing life in Los Angeles on hold to play legendary musician Gram Parsons in Grievous Angel: The Legend of Gram Parsons.

Playing Parsons is close to Lane’s heart. Describing the opportunity as “an honour and privilege” Lane has taken inspiration from Parson’s refusal to let “musical stereotypes get in the way of making good music”.

Not only is Lane a year older than Gram Parson was when he overdosed on morphine and tequila, but much of his latest album was written in Room 8 of the hotel at the edge of the Mojave Desert, where Parsons died.

Gram Parsons’ life and death reads like a Greek tragedy. His father committed suicide when Gram was 12 years old, and his mother drank herself to death five years later. His stepfather, Bob Parsons, had Gram's younger sister, Avis, committed to a mental institution, and she was later killed in a boat crash. Bob died of cirrhosis of the liver.

Parsons was not a star in his lifetime, but the bizarre theft and burning of his body in the desert by his manager Phil Kaufmann made him an overnight sensation. It’s an angle that annoys Lane, but it's unavoidably part of the story.  Continue reading

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Review: Accidently Ugly (St Martins Youth Arts Centre)

Photo: Pia Johnson

What do you fear? 

Spiders? Witches? The Boogey Man? 

How closely are your fears associated with appearances? A warty nose, a hunched back, a gappy smile, eight hairy legs and way too many eyes?

Using Oscar Wilde’s tale, The Selfish Giant as its centrepiece, Accidently Ugly pursues the connections we make between what we find ugly and therefore fear. Perhaps looking closely at a creature we find to be ugly will reveal intricate detail, just as looking beyond a person’s appearance reveals deeper truths.

With a cast aged between 5 and 12 years, some hearing impaired and profoundly deaf, images of spooky trees, kids with torches in their tents, night sounds, and ghostly stories are brought to mind. Continue reading

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wintery words

southerlies blow

blasting birds to toasty horizons 

warm as roast

winter complexion

flushed by icy Poles

blushed faces

frosted at the edges

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Review: 60th Melbourne Gang Show

Well now, this is one impressive show. How good?  Let’s just say it leaves any amateur show I’ve ever seen for dead. Period.

Melbourne Gang Show’s 60^th season consists of two one-act musicals. It opens with Cry of the Forest, a serious affair, with enviro-spiritual themes and enpoint ballet. Special effects include an illuminated ball, designed by the tech team, which changes colour with each change of hands. The comic scenes work best, and my personal highlight was The Washer Womyns’ Rag with energetic delivery and wonderful portable washing lines.

But lest you think Gang Show is solely a serious affair, the second act Once Upon Another Time is a barrel-of–laughs fairytale pantomime with jokes, puns, and slapstick comedy. Not even Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood or Snow White are spared. My favourite laugh-out-loud moment is a slow-motion sequence after Prince Charming fits Cinderella’s slipper.  

Visually it’s a smorgasbord. Continue reading


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Review: Himmelweg (Redroom Theatre Company)

Did you not see the ovens?
Did you not see the trains?
The smoke?
The ash?

On June 23, 1944, Red Cross workers inspected the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp north of Berlin. Rumours about atrocities being committed against the Jewish people were circling the world. Unthinkable things. Skeletal bodies in striped pyjamas, and worse. But the visitors found no starving children, mass graves, torture, or gas chambers - just ‘an ordinary town’. It was a hoax code-named Operation Embellishment, orchestrated to pull-the-wool-over-the-eyes of the world.  Continue reading

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60th Diamond Jubilee for Melbourne Gang Show

Never mind Queen Elizabeth’s 60^th Diamond Jubilee, this month the Melbourne Gang Show is celebrating its 60th season. They’re in a festive mood and, given their track record for final curtain marriage proposals, there may be more than the usual number of actual diamonds on show this year.

“On the final night, after the show this year, like every other year, there’ll be at least two or three engagements,” says Melbourne Gang Show Director Robert Motton. “Every year, somewhere in the show, someone gets engaged either to someone in the show, or outside.”

Melbourne Gang Show, a youth musical for a cast of 140 aged between 11-26, is written, produced, directed and performed entirely by the Scouts and Guides of the Melbourne area. An even larger support team of parents, grandparents and past-performers ensures it’s an intergenerational enterprise.

While growing theatre stars has never been an aim, chances are if you work in Melbourne’s theatre industry, onstage, in the wings, or on the rigs, one of your colleagues began in what is not so much a company, as a movement. Past cast members include Shane Jacobson (Kenny, Kenny's World, Charlie & Boots), Dave O'Neil (comedian/radio personality), Hal McElroy (Blue Heelers, Water Rats), Esben Storm (Round the Twist series writer) and Julie O'Reilly (Cats, Fiddler on the Roof). Continue reading

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Sondheim Gets a Ticket for Melbourne Season of 'Forum'

Simon Phillips (Director) and John Frost (Producer)

Stephen Sondheim will attend opening night of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum starring Geoffrey Rush at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne this October 27th.

The announcement was made at Melbourne’s Old Treasury Building this morning by director Simon Phillips and producer John Frost, suitably attired in togas and sporting a jovial mood.

Director Simon Phillips said he was “pixelated at the thought of working on this show”, describing the script as “a perfect musical confection”.

Phillips laughingly said when conceiving of the season they wanted to “put together a group of the most irresponsible actors we could find on the grounds that the boundaries between scripted text and improvised text would be blurred to the point of unidentifiability.” Continue reading

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Review: Witches of Eastwick (MLOC)

MLOC’s production of The Witches of Eastwick opened last night to an enthusiastic audience of family and friends. While the cast appeared flat in Act 1, they made up for it after interval with vigorous chorus action.

Michael Young (Darryl Van Horne), as the ‘ideal man’, was smooth, sleazy and seductive, even if his mature vintage required some suspension of belief. The Witches, Lucy MacVicar (Jane), Erin Keleher (Alexandra) and Susie McCann (Sukie) worked tightly together with some good three-part vocal work. Sean Loughlin (Fidel) was funny, and will build on last night’s laughs. Continue reading

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