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Stage Whisperer Virginia by Edna O’Brien. La Mama HQ. February 14 – 26, 2023.
Heather Lythe, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Woolf, offers an astute and insightful depiction. She plays as a grown woman and a younger more fragile Virginia, maintaining a persistently moody, anxious, and often melancholic balance in her performance.
Heather Lythe, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Woolf, offers an astute and insightful depiction. She plays as a grown woman and a younger more fragile Virginia, maintaining a persistently moody, anxious, and often melancholic balance in her performance.
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The Age, (Melbourne, Australia)- December 5, 2019
Author: Cameron Woodhead reviewer I SHOT MUSSOLINI
By Alice Bishop, La Mama at Brunswick Neighbourhood House, until December 13
Lythe and Parker are compelling as two honourable foes playing a game of cat-and-mouse that can only have one result – the great irony being that Violet's crime merely bolstered Mussolini's power and hastened the introduction of his secret police.
Author: Cameron Woodhead reviewer I SHOT MUSSOLINI
By Alice Bishop, La Mama at Brunswick Neighbourhood House, until December 13
Lythe and Parker are compelling as two honourable foes playing a game of cat-and-mouse that can only have one result – the great irony being that Violet's crime merely bolstered Mussolini's power and hastened the introduction of his secret police.
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Leader - Maribyrnong (Melbourne, Australia)-September 20, 2011
Author: People | Elizabeth Allen
A STAR of stage and screen, Coral Browne travelled the world as an actor and received numerous accolades, but she is little known in her home suburb of Footscray.
But a photographic exhibition at The Dog Theatre during this month's Melbourne Fringe Festival is set to change that. [. . .]
Artistic director Peta Hanrahan brought the exhibition to The Dog Theatre after seeing it at La Mama Theatre in Carlton, where it was shown with a play of the same name, produced by and starring Heather Lythe.
Ms Lythe said apart from her acting, Coral Browne was known for her colourful language and sense of humour.
"She was Australian and she wasn't backward in coming forward,'' Ms Lythe said.
"She had a unique wit". Though she wasn't offensive with her humour, it was uniquely Australian.
Mrs Vincent Price -- The Photographic Exhibition will be on display at The Dog Theatre@Footscray Town Hall, Napier St, Footscray from Wednesday, September 21, to Saturday, October 8. The event is free.
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The Age, (Melbourne, Australia)-February 21, 2011
Author: Cameron Woodhead reviewer MRS VINCENT PRICE
Rating: 4/5
By Peter Quilter. La Mama, Carlton, until February 27
As Coral (Heather Lythe) and Vincent (Grant Smith) prepare to appear at the Oscars, working off nerves through eccentric displays of intimacy, we get flashbacks to memorable episodes in Coral's career. There's her meeting with the notorious spy Guy Burgess in Russia, on a Hamlet tour in the '50s; a behind-the-scenes look at the lesbian sex sequence in The Killing of Sister George; an awkward chat with Alan Bennett during the filming of An Englishman Abroad.
The script is full of one-liners and louche remarks, and its charismatic humour inclines you to forgive the sometimes too blunt insertion of biographical detail. An entertaining, crisply acted comic memorial to a larger-than-life Australian.
Author: Cameron Woodhead reviewer MRS VINCENT PRICE
Rating: 4/5
By Peter Quilter. La Mama, Carlton, until February 27
As Coral (Heather Lythe) and Vincent (Grant Smith) prepare to appear at the Oscars, working off nerves through eccentric displays of intimacy, we get flashbacks to memorable episodes in Coral's career. There's her meeting with the notorious spy Guy Burgess in Russia, on a Hamlet tour in the '50s; a behind-the-scenes look at the lesbian sex sequence in The Killing of Sister George; an awkward chat with Alan Bennett during the filming of An Englishman Abroad.
The script is full of one-liners and louche remarks, and its charismatic humour inclines you to forgive the sometimes too blunt insertion of biographical detail. An entertaining, crisply acted comic memorial to a larger-than-life Australian.
The Age, (Melbourne, Australia)-February 9, 2011
Author: Robin Usher
The play's director, Alice Bishop, says Browne was known for her formidable talent, as well as her long list of lovers, who allegedly included African-American singer Paul Robeson and photographer Cecil Beaton, as well as several women.
"She never lost her scathing turn of phrase," she says, which included frequent use of the "F" word. Bishop learnt of her long career from Heather Lythe, who worked on the London stage before moving to Melbourne and who is playing Browne in this production.
"Her colourful language meant she was often regarded as outrageous and became infamous for it," she says. [. . .]
The cast includes the singer Grant Smith (as Price), who has also performed in London and won a Helpmann Award for his performance in Opera Australia's The Eighth Wonder.
One of Browne's greatest successes was as Gertrude to Sir Michael Redgrave's Hamlet in a Royal Shakespeare Company tour to the Soviet Union. In Moscow she met English spy Guy Burgess backstage, and agreed to smuggle his measurements back to a Savile Row tailor so he could live his exile in style. This adventure was the basis for Bennett's script for the 1983 telemovie, An Englishman Abroad, in which Browne played herself and won a BAFTA award for her performance.
She also made the cult film The Killing of Sister George with Susannah York in 1968. "It was one of the first films to portray lesbian culture and includes a seduction scene with York," Bishop says.
"The film was censored when it was released, although it is available in its original form now. I still wonder how it got made."
Browne moved to California with Price and continued her stage career. She died in 1991.
Bishop says she is largely forgotten in Melbourne because she moved abroad and rarely returned. "But she did bequeath 15 boxes of memorabilia to the Victorian Performing Arts Museum and I am dying to have a look inside them," she says.
Author: Robin Usher
The play's director, Alice Bishop, says Browne was known for her formidable talent, as well as her long list of lovers, who allegedly included African-American singer Paul Robeson and photographer Cecil Beaton, as well as several women.
"She never lost her scathing turn of phrase," she says, which included frequent use of the "F" word. Bishop learnt of her long career from Heather Lythe, who worked on the London stage before moving to Melbourne and who is playing Browne in this production.
"Her colourful language meant she was often regarded as outrageous and became infamous for it," she says. [. . .]
The cast includes the singer Grant Smith (as Price), who has also performed in London and won a Helpmann Award for his performance in Opera Australia's The Eighth Wonder.
One of Browne's greatest successes was as Gertrude to Sir Michael Redgrave's Hamlet in a Royal Shakespeare Company tour to the Soviet Union. In Moscow she met English spy Guy Burgess backstage, and agreed to smuggle his measurements back to a Savile Row tailor so he could live his exile in style. This adventure was the basis for Bennett's script for the 1983 telemovie, An Englishman Abroad, in which Browne played herself and won a BAFTA award for her performance.
She also made the cult film The Killing of Sister George with Susannah York in 1968. "It was one of the first films to portray lesbian culture and includes a seduction scene with York," Bishop says.
"The film was censored when it was released, although it is available in its original form now. I still wonder how it got made."
Browne moved to California with Price and continued her stage career. She died in 1991.
Bishop says she is largely forgotten in Melbourne because she moved abroad and rarely returned. "But she did bequeath 15 boxes of memorabilia to the Victorian Performing Arts Museum and I am dying to have a look inside them," she says.
The Age, (Melbourne, Australia)-August 9, 2005
Author: HELEN THOMSON, REVIEWER
THEATRE REVIEW: WRONGFUL LIFE by Ron Elisha, directed by Dave Letch, Chapel off Chapel, 12 Little Chapel Street, Prahran, until August 28. Running time: 140 minutes.
RON Elisha is a doctor as well as a distinguished playwright, with plays such as Einstein, Two, The Levine Comedy, The Goldberg Variations and many others attesting to his serious and passionate concerns.
In Wrongful Life he pits the medical and legal professions against one another in extremely contentious terms.
All the participants in his drama are women, and director Dave Letch has put together an impressive ensemble of actors.
After a suicide attempt at 18, Gina (Melanie Berry), a woman haunted by depression, decides to sue her doctor, Selina (Kirsty Child), for the advice given to her mother, Eve (Carole Yelland), not to abort the child her husband didn't want. Hers has been a wrongful life, and it is Selina she blames.
Gina's lawyer, Hilary (Heather Lythe), decides to take on the case, the first of its kind, while Selina engages the services of barrister Liz (Penelope Stewart). But the plot thickens when, after another suicide attempt, Gina announces she is pregnant. What eventuates is a double wrongful life case, the second on behalf of the baby.
This is barely doing justice to the complexities of the story, which are worked out in almost exhaustive detail. The process changes all of the characters, not always for the better.
The law is presented as self-interested, immoral, greedy and opportunistic. Even the "good" lawyer, Liz, selfishly abandons her client at the last minute. The medical profession, in the shape of Selina, is presented in terms of noble victimhood - a Holocaust family background is even evoked on her behalf.
Gina and her mother are presented as wilfully unprepared to take responsibility for their own lives. Gina has a last-minute change of heart but does not act on it. Eve, from being a weak young woman becomes a monstrous mother, happily prepared to use her daughter as the means to a fortune.
The production is good and the writing is polished and sometimes powerful, although the play would benefit from cutting. But as drama it becomes propaganda for a cause that is given only one set of terms.
Author: HELEN THOMSON, REVIEWER
THEATRE REVIEW: WRONGFUL LIFE by Ron Elisha, directed by Dave Letch, Chapel off Chapel, 12 Little Chapel Street, Prahran, until August 28. Running time: 140 minutes.
RON Elisha is a doctor as well as a distinguished playwright, with plays such as Einstein, Two, The Levine Comedy, The Goldberg Variations and many others attesting to his serious and passionate concerns.
In Wrongful Life he pits the medical and legal professions against one another in extremely contentious terms.
All the participants in his drama are women, and director Dave Letch has put together an impressive ensemble of actors.
After a suicide attempt at 18, Gina (Melanie Berry), a woman haunted by depression, decides to sue her doctor, Selina (Kirsty Child), for the advice given to her mother, Eve (Carole Yelland), not to abort the child her husband didn't want. Hers has been a wrongful life, and it is Selina she blames.
Gina's lawyer, Hilary (Heather Lythe), decides to take on the case, the first of its kind, while Selina engages the services of barrister Liz (Penelope Stewart). But the plot thickens when, after another suicide attempt, Gina announces she is pregnant. What eventuates is a double wrongful life case, the second on behalf of the baby.
This is barely doing justice to the complexities of the story, which are worked out in almost exhaustive detail. The process changes all of the characters, not always for the better.
The law is presented as self-interested, immoral, greedy and opportunistic. Even the "good" lawyer, Liz, selfishly abandons her client at the last minute. The medical profession, in the shape of Selina, is presented in terms of noble victimhood - a Holocaust family background is even evoked on her behalf.
Gina and her mother are presented as wilfully unprepared to take responsibility for their own lives. Gina has a last-minute change of heart but does not act on it. Eve, from being a weak young woman becomes a monstrous mother, happily prepared to use her daughter as the means to a fortune.
The production is good and the writing is polished and sometimes powerful, although the play would benefit from cutting. But as drama it becomes propaganda for a cause that is given only one set of terms.