LOOKING THROUGH A GLASS ONION 2002 Schedule & Reviews
This time it's the country towns getting the pleasure. Don't be a fool and miss it - this is a show you will never regret seeing.
DAY
NSW
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
VIC
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Tuesday
Wednesday
TAS
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
NSW
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
QLD
Saturday
Sunday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
DATE
12-Feb
13-Feb
14-Feb
15-Feb
16-Feb
17-Feb
19-Feb
20-Feb
21-Feb
22-Feb
23-Feb
24-Feb
26-Feb
27-Feb
28-Feb
1-Mar
2-Mar
5-Mar
6-Mar
8-Mar
9-Mar
10-Mar
12-Mar
13-Mar
14-Mar
15-Mar
16-Mar
17-Mar
19-Mar
20-Mar
21-Mar
22-Mar
23-Mar
24-Mar
VENUE
Dee Why RSL Club
Cronulla Sharks
Canterbury Hurlstone Park RSL
Central Coast Leagues Club
Manning Ent, Centre - Taree
Coffs Harbour Ex Services Club
Port Macquarie RSL Club
Penrith Panthers
North Sydney Leagues Club
Newcastle Workers Club
Castlehill RSL Club
South Sydney Juniors
West Gippsland Arts Centre
Frankston Cultural Centre
Geelong Performing Arts Centre
Her Majesty's Theatre - Ballarat
Melbourne Palais Theatre
Barooga Sports Club
Swan Hill Town Hall
Wrest Point Casino - Hobart
Princess Theatre - Launceston
Devonport Convention Centre
Bathurst Memorial Ent Centre
Dubbo Civic Centre
Orange Function Centre
West Tamworth Leagues Club
Empire Theatre - Toowoomba
Lismore Workers Club - 4pm show
Seagulls Club, Tweed Heads
Nambour Civic Centre
Moncrieff Theatre - Bundaberg
Brolga Theatre - Maryborough
Gladstone Entertainment Centre Rockhampton Performing Arts Centre
BOOKINGS
02 9454 4000
02 9523 0222
02 9559 0000
02 4325 9811
02 6552 5699
02 6652 3976
02 6580 2300
02 4720 5555
02 9466 8888
02 4926 2700
02 9364 4800
02 9349 7555
03 5624 2456
03 9784 1060
03 5225 1200
03 5333 5888
03 9537 2444
03 5873 4448
03 5032 3033
03 6221 1700
03 6323 3666
03 6420 2900
02 6333 6161
02 6884 8599
02 6393 8111
02 6765 7588
1 300 655 299
02 6621 7401
1 800 074 130
07 5430 9309
07 4151 2861
07 4122 6060
07 4972 2822
07 4927 4111
CRYING SHAME The Sunday Telegraph 10th February 2002. By: Diana Simmonds
JOHN Waters is taking his John Lennon show on the road again for what might be the last time -- in Australia. ``It's timeless,'' he says of Looking Through A Glass Onion, the music-theatre piece he wrote as an exploration and celebration of the Beatle who will never grow old. ``He won't,'' Waters agrees, ``On the other hand, I will.''
A one-time R&B singer, Waters came to Australia to appear in Hair in 1969 and never went away. Glass Onion (the title taken from one of Lennon's own songs) has been a legendary vehicle for him.
The final Australian tour of Glass Onion is exclusively on the club circuit. ``I'm committed to the new production of Oliver and playing Fagin,'' Waters says, ``so I can't see myself doing it again. But my last remaining ambition for it is to take it to the US and we've now opened the lines with Yoko.''
Meanwhile, out in Sydney's clubland there are people who undoubtedly feel that way too.
Lennon show for NY The Sunday Telegraph 17th FEB 2002
AUSTRALIAN actor John Waters has finally been given permission to take his sell-out John Lennon tribute show, Looking Through A Glass Onion, to Broadway. But before he arrives in New York early next year, Waters must obey the request of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, and adjust the show's script. Ono, the licensee of Lennon's music, wants Waters to delete a line in the show that says Paul McCartney was more ``advanced'' musically than Lennon when the duo first met. She has also asked him to change a reference to her age.
Q&A with John Waters Newcastle Herald 14 Feb 2002
Full name: John Russell Waters ? Russell being my father's name, which all my siblings were given as a middle name, even the girls!
Date of birth: 8.12.48
Earliest memory: A sea of faces staring down at me ? bars all around me ? is this jail?
Childhood pin-up: Pauline the Girl Guide from the Rupert Bear stories. I was in love.
Silliest thing you've done: Delivered a dramatic and angry exit speech to a group of friends and with great flourish, instead of taking the door out of the room, I walked straight into a broom cupboard.
Bravest thing you've done: Walked down Hunter St in Newcastle in 1969 with long hair, beads and flares! Is image all about hair: It certainly was in Newcastle in 1969!
Favourite indulgence: Five days of Test cricket.
Worst habit: Pretending to know the answer to everything.
Three things you would take to a desert island: Zoë, a guitar, mosquito repellant.
Favourite kitchen appliance: A sharp knife makes preparation a breeze.
Who do you most admire: Jimmy Greaves ? world's bestest ever soccer player!
If a movie was made of your life, who would play you: Humphrey Bogart ? although anyone who looks surly on the outside will do.
Tea or coffee? Both. It used to be tea in the morning, coffee at night. But since my procurement of a rather flashy espresso machine my preferences have changed and I stick to coffee during the day and organic tea at night.
John Waters is the star of Looking Through A Glass Onion: John Lennon in Words and Music. The stage show is now in its fourth season and will appear for one night only at ClubNova Newcastle on February 22 at 8pm. Tickets are available from the club.
Songs follow the arc of Lennon's life date and paper unknown.
LOOKING THROUGH A GLASS ONION. Created by John Waters and Stewart D'Arietta.
Lennon fans won't be able to pass this up, or shouldn't.
In a two-hour performance showcasing the music of John Lennon, interspersed with short narrative bursts and caustic dry humor, John Waters and Stewart D'Arietta interact superbly to bring a telescoped version of Lennon's life into the Sydney stage. Glass Onion started as a Waters-Arrieta show at the Tilbury with no strings attached (a string quartet was brought in in its big-venue Theatre Royal program a year or so ago). From the Tilbury it toured nationally twice and was at London's West End for three months.
The show is well credentialled and Waters is a creditable Lennon. The songs written and made famous by Lennon are here, as well as some less known, but they do seem to follow the arc of Lennon's life, from his loves to his hopes. A more intimate club setting at its current tour venues, rather than in the 1100+ capacity Theatre Royal (where we first reviewed Looking through a Glass Onion), would probably make this performance more telling and more poignant, particularly since the production looked relatively static in the huge theatre venue.
But if you're a Lennon fan, all that probably matters is the music, and Waters never waters it down.
Various Sydney club venues, February 12-24.
Waters run smooth for US tour Sunday Herald Sun Sunday 24th Feb 2002 By: ADAM ZWAR
John Waters finally has the green light to take his John Lennon tribute show to Broadway. ADAM ZWAR finds it has been a battle to reach agreement with Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono.
John Waters has crept past the point of being a solid star and is on the verge of becoming an Australian icon. Each year he turns up in another musical, play, television series or film. Sometimes, he wins AFI awards -- at others he simply makes history.
But the work that has solidified his reputation more than anything is Looking Through A Glass Onion, his one-man acting/singing tribute to Beatle John Lennon.
The show opened in a Sydney pub in 1994 and moved on to the country's biggest theatres. A West End season followed and Waters expects to take the show to Broadway early next year. Negotiating the New York season has been a long battle. Waters would have liked to have ``done Broadway'' by now, but Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, has taken time to give the production the all clear. ``We've covered negotiations with Yoko -- making contact with her is the hardest thing,'' Waters says.
``She has to license the music. She did make a few comments about the show. She wanted to change some text. She felt I misquoted her age. The vanity of women. She was eight years older than John. And I had her age completely right in the show. But she wanted me to change it."
``She also said, `Why do you say Paul McCartney was a better musician than John Lennon?' ``I said, `No, you've got that wrong. It's a quote I use from a reviewer, who said Paul was more advanced musically when they first met.' ``I mean, it was true. He knew more chords. So she wanted that changed, too. ``But it looks like we're ready to go. We've got past that last hurdle. It's so exciting. I think it will be pretty much the last hurrah for Glass Onion.''
Because one of Lennon's wives was testy about the show that starts and ends with the rock star's assassination, does not mean the feeling was universal. When Waters remounted Glass Onion in Sydney in 2000, Lennon's first wife, Cynthia, came along and thought it ``marvellous''.
``Zoe (Waters' wife) was talking to some people who had been to a restaurant with Cynthia Lennon,'' he says. ``And they said she'd seen the show and loved it. She had a lot of good things to say about it. ``I wish I'd known she was there. I don't blame her for not coming back and saying hello. I probably wouldn't have either if I were her. But at least she thought enough about it to come and see it.''
Melbourne audiences can farewell Glass Onion on Saturday in a one-off performance at the Palais, St Kilda. The 3000-seat theatre holds special importance for Waters. ``I've seen Bob Dylan and Joe Cocker play there as well as the Australian premiere of Jesus Christ Superstar,'' he says.
Next month, Waters will start rehearsing the role of Fagin for Lionel Bart's classic musical Oliver, which opens in Sydney in May and Melbourne in October. All this theatre work is well and good, but what happened to the brooding screen star who received top billing in Breaker Morant and Boulevard Of Broken Dreams and was the only one of Jackie Weaver's leading men she claims not to have bedded?
``I'm really keen to see a great role come up for me,'' he says. ``I think it's true that (the Australian film industry) is going through a bit of a teen-flick period at the moment. When that happens, I just bide my time and wait for the next wave of scripts to come around. Which they will. I'll get back into it when there's some great parts.''
Actor John Waters, star of the John Lennon tribute show Looking Through A Glass Onion - PROFILE. Herald Sun Monday 25th Feb 2002. Section - Money.
Q: Looking Through a Glass Onion celebrates the life of John Lennon. Were you a Beatles fan? How hard is it to portray one of music's most revered figures? A: It wasn't so much that I was a fan of the Beatles, they simply dominated everyone's thoughts in the middle sixties. Emulating Lennon today is more like an exercise in collective memory gathering rather than copying.
Q: Which has been your most memorable role over the years? And the one you'd most like to forget? A: Sgt MacKellar in Rush established me. I've yet to regret any role.
Q: Your career has featured stage, screen and TV. Which is the most lucrative? A: Money? I am an artiste.
Q: Have you ever had to take work outside acting to make ends meet? A: In the early days, yes. And the dole.
Q: You were one of the early stars of Play School, which has featured many great Australian actors over the years. Do they appear on the show because they like it or is it usually to earn some cash? A: It helped me grow as a performer to pretend to be an Incy Wincy spider.
Q: What advice would you give young actors trying to break into the industry? Is it harder now than when you started? A: It is always hard. Ask yourself ``how much criticism can you really take?''
Q: Are you good at saving and investing when you have a good job, or do you tend to spend it while you can? A: I don't own a private jet. Does that answer your question?
Q: Are you happy with your financial situation or would more money make you happier? A: I'm always happy with the given situation, but never frightened of the prospect of change for the better.
Q: Have you ever had the opportunity to make a lot of money but unknowingly passed it up? A: I might have thrown away a few winning lottery tickets.
Q: If you could buy yourself a skill or talent, what would it be? A: To play tenor saxophone.
Q: If you could buy yourself a physical change, what would it be? A: Eyes in the back of my head.
Q: What is the most expensive present you've given someone? Who got it? A: Even if I could remember, why would I tell?
Q: What job would you like to do for a day? A: Sports commentator.
Q: What kind of car do you drive? Why did you choose it? A: At the moment my wife's 1978 Mazda 323. I have no idea why she chose it.
Q: How much would you spend on a good meal? How much, if any, do you tip? A: Ooh millions. Millions.
Q: What would you buy first if you won Tattslotto? A: A plane ticket to somewhere very hot and very sunny.
Q: If you had to give away $1 million, who would get it? A: I'm open to offers.
Q: Do you have a good tip for saving money? A: No.
Looking Through a Glass Onion plays at the Palais Theatre, Saturday, March 2. Bookings 9537 2444 or Ticketmaster7 on 136 100.
Looking to finish Herald Sun Thursday 28th Feb 2002 By: ROSS BRUNDRETT and PETA HELLARD
IT'S been a big month for stage and screen star John Waters. He married partner Zoe on January 26 and is busy travelling with what could be the last tour of his long-running production, Looking Through a Glass Onion.
The only Melbourne performance of the show, based on John Lennon's music, takes place on Saturday night at the Palais theatre.
After playing the part for 10 years (which is also the length of Lennon's solo career before his death in 1980), does Waters ever get sick of it? "No, it's a very, very fresh thing for me every night," he said. "John was the one I related to most out of the four Beatles."
Lens on Lennon Herald Sun Friday 1st March 2002 By: ALISON BARCLAY
Will the Big Onion go down well in the Big Apple? ALISON BARCLAY reports.
By this time next year, John Waters may be Broadway bound. But whoa! Congratulations aren't quite in order just yet. Eager though he is to go with his popular tribute to John Lennon, Looking Through a Glass Onion, Waters is wary of reports that a US tour is ready to roll. Like the onion of the title, such a feat has many layers of fine and fragile paperwork.
``The fact is we are in the middle of delicate negotiations and nothing is signed or sealed,'' Waters says. ``But I would love to do the show in America because I feel American audiences will love it. John Lennon became an honorary American, really, in the last 10 years of his life, by moving to New York City and wanting to have a New York identity, because Yoko Ono was from New York.
So,'' he grins, ``having fought the Nixon administration, which suspected him of all sorts of subterfuge, there he stayed. As I say in the show, `I got to be on first-name terms with all the FBI agents who followed me about. Every time I turned around I saw someone talking into his sleeve'. The Nixon administration was a particularly paranoid one.''
So, too, in a milder way, is the Ono administration. Yoko Ono, as the licensee of Lennon's music, wanted to be assured that Glass Onion will do her late husband's memory proud.
Glass Onion has had two well-received London seasons in 1993 and '94 and is midway through a 10-week Australian revival. Waters has been in and out of the show for 10 years, which means he has been playing Lennon for as long as Lennon was a solo artist. He is not perturbed his Australian profile has yet to reach the US. ``People in America don't confuse Australia with Austria any more. They're not surprised we speak English!''
Waters can speak many kinds of English -- the Estuary style of his native London, the Cockney of Fagin, whom he'll soon be playing in the musical Oliver!, even a melodious impersonation of his Yorkshire-born wife Zoe.
Lennon had the typical tones of a middle-class Liverpudlian, whom Waters mimics very well. In song he is remarkably like Lennon, but this is as far as he allows his impression of the legend to go.``If I tried to dress up and wear little glasses I would feel weird. I would feel very easily caught out,'' he says. ``Someone would say `You're not John Lennon!' ''
Glass Onion is a musical collage of Lennon's life, beginning and ending with his murder in 1980. What it can't show is how the myth of Lennon as folk hero has burgeoned since his death, embraced even by nations that shunned Beatlemania. Cuba, for example, reviled Lennon for decades but now has a statue to his glory in Havana.
Waters was 15 when the Fab Four burst on to the scene in 1963 and for his generation the passing of a Beatle is especially painful. He mourns George Harrison, whose death in November meant the loss of ``yet another piece of the jigsaw puzzle. George was just as witty as John was,'' Waters says. At a US press conference, a reporter demanded to know when the lads were going to get respectable haircuts. ``George said, `I had one yesterday as a matter of fact'. ``It is nice that he could stand there and have a laugh about it.''
Looking Through a Glass Onion, Palais Theatre, St Kilda, tomorrow. Tickets: $49.90. Bookings: 9537 2444 or 13 61 00.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
