Left – Suzanne Pereira. Cover – Joanna Downing. Photos – Clare HawleyCunts and cocks kick-start Between the Streetlight and the Moon, playwright Melita Rowston's foray into the arts end of the world, or, more accurately, the art history end.
The play begins with art historian university lecturer, Zadie (Lucy Miller) and her zealous French student, Dominique (Joanna Downing) examining and effusing over a projected image of a female torso of which the focus is a luxuriant follicular vagina.
Their discussion, frank and forthright, uttered in vulgar vernacular but informed with intelligence and intellectual vigour, range from the difference or demarcation between art and pornography, the concept of the male gaze, and the penis size of dust mites.
Zadie is obsessed with Impressionist painter, Berthe Morisot, an obsession shared by Morisot's contemporary, Eduoard Manet, whose muse she was.
Zadie is researching and writing a book that she claims will blow the international art world apart, a task that has taken six years already and is taking its toll on her tenuous tenure at the university.
Zadie's preoccupation with Morisot and Manet mirrors her own secret history as a painter and muse and is personified by the appearance of her mentor and ex lover, Jeff (Lani Tupu), dressed in dapper, debonair, ghostly white.
The last time I saw Lucy Miller – truly one of Sydney theatre's buried under a bushel talents – she was playing the artist, Galactia, in Tooth & Sinew's production of Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution, and here she shows again her artful technique and range.
Joanna Downing is effervescent as the enthusiastic acolyte, and solid support is provided by Lani Tupu, Ben McIvor and Suzanne Pereira.
Jeremy Allen's set is a blank canvas white walled gallery on which art work and quotes from Berthe Morisot are projected.
Between the Streetlight and the Moon was one of five finalists for the Sydney Theatre Company's Patrick White Playwright Award in 2016 and short-listed for the Silver Gull Award in 2015. Kudos to the King Cross Theatre for getting it from the page to the stage.
Mophead Productions presents
BETWEEN THE STREETLIGHT AND THE MOON
by Melita Rowston
Directed by Anthony Skuse
Venue: Kings Cross Theatre | Kings Cross Hotel, Level 2, 244-248 William Street, Potts Point
Dates: 5 – 27 May 2017
Tickets: $37 – $32
Bookings: www.trybooking.com/
