Category: Nicole Pingon

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,…

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…