AustLit

'Artist. Rebel. Icon.

'He burst onto the international art scene, all golden curls and bravado. He was dynamic, damaged, a big idea and a bold brush. With the vivacious Wendy on his arm, Brett Whiteley was magnetic.

'He abhorred straight lines, adored drugs, alcohol, women. He worked in vivid colour and ravishing curves. Heroin was both muse and merciless master. Out of this tumultuous life spilled a messy array of brilliant artworks and astonishing self-reflection.

'In 2019, this Australian icon meets two of Australia’s greatest artists in a brand new work for the Australian stage: Whiteley, by Elena Kats-Chernin and Justin Fleming.

'Kats-Chernin is peerless among contemporary composers, celebrated for her enormous output and music that bursts with colour, life and tenderness. Fleming is a respected playwright and librettist whose work is renowned for its warmth, wit and poignancy.

'Together they’ve created an opera to honour the life and work of a man who could not extricate his talent from his demons.

'Production designer Dan Potra’s technology-driven set is an immersive world created from Whiteley’s most famous paintings. Experience the works of a modern master on moving, larger-than-life screens.' (Production summary)

'Molière's The Misanthrope is taken from seventeenth century France to twenty-first century Australia in a new version by Justin Fleming. This volume includes Fleming's original version as well as the version performed at the Sydney Opera House in 2018 in which the gender of Alceste is reversed from male to female.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'From the beginning of time, worlds rise and worlds crash... And life is born and life is burned.

'1838: Richard Wagner writes Rienzi. Seventy years later, a 17-year-old Adolf Hitler witnesses the composer’s first opera in performance - and is struck dumb. For Wagner, it was one of the greatest creative acts known to us. For Hitler, it sets in motion the greatest wave of human destruction we have ever seen. For both, the city of Dresden is their stage. 

'Justin Fleming’s explosive new play is a story of creativity and destruction and the dark side of human inspiration. Of the fork in the road and how far you might travel along it before you are stopped. It is the story of Hitler and Wagner, and the woman who connected them through time.'

Source: Production blurb (Kings Cross Theatre).

'Juliet and Clinton are in love. Guileless, sweet, all-encompassing love. However, love is not without its impediments. Standing in the way of their eternal happiness are Juliet’s mother and sister, whose disapproval is of the most high-brow kind.

'Griffin is doing a Moliére! Why? Because that great Australian playwright, Justin Fleming, has audaciously brought this one screaming into 21st century Australia and it is fabulous. We love it.

'It’s sassy, it’s silly, it’s Sydney.' (Publication summary)

'Shellshock is a love story. Granted, an unusual love story… between an Australian teenager and his mate Herman, a tortoise – the oldest living survivor of the Gallipoli campaign.

'When a newspaper article reveals the surprising identity of this last survivor, a mysterious woman from Turkey arrives at the Lindsay farm. Fourteen year old Tom, his father Jack, and feisty grandmother June, become embroiled in a drama that takes them to the other side of the world, in search of answers, and the true origin of Herman.

'Justin Fleming’s heartfelt and quirky new play features Turkish shadow puppets and a brilliant cast. Shellshock will be a highly entertaining and uplifting experience for young and not-so-young audiences, in the spirit of War Horse.

'Shellshock is a new play commissioned by Riverside Theatres.' (Production summary)

'This revival of Molière's classic 17th Century satire is divine intervention gone mad!

'Orgon is a wealthy man attempting to come to terms with middle age. Fortunately for him, and much to the dismay of his family, he meets Tartuffe – a supposed man of the cloth. Though everyone else can see Tartuffe for the fraud he really is, Orgon becomes obsessed with him, and it isn’t long before Orgon won’t make a decision without him.

'The relationship initially appears to be harmless, however when Orgon begins promising his possessions, his home, even his daughter to Tartuffe, Orgon’s family resolves to expose Tartuffe for the swindler he is.

'Filled with biting satire, this adaptation of thumping English verse by Justin Fleming will keep you enthralled with its Australian vernacular and subversive wit.' (2016 Production summary)

'THE STARRY MESSENGER is set in modern day Florence, where Rachel, a festival playwright, is writing about the year 1600 in Italy when Vincenzo Galilei is working with a team towards the world's first opera, while his son, Galileo Galilei, discovers that the earth moves round the sun.

'Together, they cause mayhem. But in unexpected and gradually chilling ways, the past invades Rachel's life, placing her and her ardent lover, James, at the centre of a dangerous web of intrigue.

'This is a theatrical account of the emergence of the New Music of the Earth and the New Music of the Spheres.'

Source: australianplays.org