Anthony Weigh and I first spoke about this play in 2017. For a long time, Melbourne Theatre Company had wanted to commission a story about the artists and patrons at Heide who forged such significant pathways in Australian modern art. I believe Anthony Weigh is one of Australia’s great writers and after living and working overseas it is an honour for him to be writing for the Australian stage and to finally work with him after years of admiring his work from afar.
Like many people, I first came across the people from Heide through Albert Tucker’s black and white photos. They show Joy Hester doing handstands, couples kissing under trees and languishing picnics, walks on beaches, artists painting on kitchen tables and cutting hair on the back stairs – they completely captured my poetic imagination.
Anthony’s idea to breathe life into these founding members of modern Australian art – and to do so as a fantasy by taking the bare bones and imagining the rest – was inspired. Because that’s what myth is, isn’t it? Part truth, part imagined. One of our first conversations was about the David Hare play Plenty. The play starts with a young woman, standing on top of a hill. The war is over and her work as a resistance fighter in France has come to an end. She imagines that after everything they have been through, surely now anything and everything is possible and the lands will become lands of plenty. Through great destruction comes regrowth and opportunity. But history tells us that unless it is seized, the window of opportunity soon closes and things return to what they were. Or even worse, regress further.
We discussed the play Uncle Vanya and how to create the same sense of place, time and drama here in Australia.
The fight and spirit in Sunday Reed reminded me of all the women pre and post war who imagined what was possible, only to have the oxygen sucked out of them by the decades that followed. Sunday reminds us of the audacity to be a dreamer – the bravery required to imagine and forge the modern into being – to live and love and see in radically different ways.
Nikki Shiels and I last worked together on Home, I’m Darling – one of the only shows of 2020 to have a full season before the pandemic. In it, we talked a lot of about the dreamer – how they exist in the world, how they carve out a space for their vulnerable dreams to exist and how hard they have to fight to keep them alive. Nikki is an actor at the top of her game, a dazzling talent that is met so brilliantly by the legend that is Matt Day, the sublime Ratidzo Mambo, and joining us for this Sydney season, the captivating James O’Connell, and the enigmatic Jude Hyland.
The incredible artistic team of Anna Cordingley on set, Paul Jackson, lights, Jethro Woodward, composition and sound, and Harriet Oxley, costumes, have collaborated, distilled and tumbled through this work together for over 6 years –creating a world where light and language are magnified to create a psychological space that leads Sunday through her sense memory towards the fateful night under the Oak tree, a world filled with improvised jazz drums and the seeds of modern Australian art that pushed to the surface through these complicated yet glorious relationships
The opportunity to bring it back to life again here in “Sydney Sydney Sydney” is such a great opportunity. So much new Australian work doesn’t t get an opportunity for a second life and it’s so important for new work to be given the space and time to develop. Thank you to the donors of this show for making this show possible.
I thank the incredible team of Geraldine Cook-Dafner the voice coach, Zoe Davis, Assistant Stage Manager, the wonderful Stage Manager Pippa Wright who has been with us from the very beginning, and everyone at Melbourne Theatre Company. I also thank Amy Cater, Lyndall Grant, Beau Esposito and Sonya Suares for all their work on the evolution of this show. It’s been collaborative theatre at its best.
But this is for you Sydney direct from Melbourne – a story that in a way mirrors the complex relationship between two cities. It’s about the light, the art, friendship, ownership and love in all its stunning complexities.
Sunday plays from 28 Oct - 7 Dec at Sydney Opera House. Book your tickets now.
Jude Hyland, Sarah Goodes and Nikki Shiels. Photo: Charlie Kinross