Category: Matthew Lee

Oliver Schermacher remembers: Matthew Lee travelling in a car from Canberra with musician Oliver Shermacher,  when he hears for the first time Hector Berlioz’s SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE, at full blast – bopping in my seat and enthusiastically head-banging to Berlioz’ erratic and colorful music. Mat became intrigued when I described its deranged story and the eye-brow raising background of the piece as a love letter to a woman he had never met. Though Berlioz did stalk and woo her for seven years, finally threatening to over dose on heroin, before she, actress Harriet Smithson, capitulated and married him. (Ultimately, of course,…

White Box Theatre and Seymour Centre present THE CAMPAIGN, by Campion Decent, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, City Rd, Chippendale. February 11 – 28. THE CAMPAIGN, is a new Australian play from Campion Decent, commissioned by the Tasmanian Theatre Company, telling the history of the 9-year campaign for the human rights of the Gay and Lesbian community of Tasmania. THE CAMPAIGN is presented largely in a verbatim mode and based on interviews and research through the Parliament of Tasmania, the State Library of Tasmania, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. It is a meticulous 90-minute work loaded…

TABLE, is a 2013 play by British playwright, Tanya Ronder. David Best builds a table in London somewhere. It is later taken to Tanganyika, by a family member, Sarah, as part of her missionary ‘dowry’. It shares in the ‘adventures’ of this family and in due course returns to South London. A table, six generations. A table that witnesses the dramas and triumphs of the family Best. The play is a neat old-fashioned evening and has the talents of the actors playing 23 different characters over a century or more to bring it passionately to life. Julian Garner is most…

Charles O’Grady in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre present ARE WE AWAKE?, by Charles O’Grady, in the Kings Cross Theatre, at The Kings Cross Hotel. February 21 – March 3. This is a new Australian play by Charles O’Grady and is part of a season of plays being presented at the Kings Cross Theatre (KXT) as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, 2018. Hypnos (Daniel Monks) and Endymion (Matthew Lee) are two young gay men living in Sydney in a very loving relationship that is expressed in very intimate terms. The love adoration is palpable between the two…

  Glitterbomb presents, A PERIOD PIECE, Created by Carissa Licciardello, Gretel Vella and Company, at the Old 5o5, in Eliza St Newtown. 14-25 March. 4 actors: Julia Christensen, Matthew Lee, Julia Robertson (especially good), James Wright, and a musical Band of 3: Mikaela Atallah, Hannah Cheers and Clare Hennessy in (mock) period clothings in a Set Design that reminded me of a pallid version of the new Disney ‘A Beauty and the Beast-look’ (Production Design, by Nick Fry), present an hour, extended sketch show, written by Gretel Vella and Directed by Carissa Licciardello, called A PERIOD PIECE. ‘Gretel and Carissa’…