Theatre: the Motherfucker with the Hat

Black Swan State Theatre Company

for Fringe World

Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Directed by Adam Mitchell

Designed by Bryan Woltjen

Lighting design by Trent Suidgeest

Sound design by James Luscombe

Featuring Rhoda Lopez, Austin Castiglione, Kenneth Ransome, Fayssal Bazzi and Alison van Reeken

The Studio, State Theatre Centre

Until February 3

It’s a delicious irony that Black Swan’s first productions for 2013 are the staple crowd-puller, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Stephen Adly Guirgis’s incendiary The Motherfucker with the Hat.

They seem as far apart as two plays can get, yet, at their heart, they share the joy of language beautifully crafted and a fascination with human duplicity and its unraveling.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian

John Milson

I was very sorry to hear of the death of John Milson yesterday. John directed me (and scores of vastly more promising student actors) in three huge UDS/ Festival of Perth shows in the mid '70s, and he (with his superb memory) remained a friend and mentor to us all.
I last saw John at Meow Meow's Astor concert a couple of months ago, but we had one other last contact. I wrote in my review of the terrific Eve at the Blue Room that I hoped Milson would get to see it because it reminded me of the sort of brave Australian theatre he championed back in the Southport St Hole in the Wall days. 
He went, and I was right. He wrote me  a short letter praising the production and Margi Brown Ash's performance, and closed with "the health is fading but I've no intention of retiring and hope we meet up some time soon".
We'll have to save that one for the sweet by-and-by, Milson.