SYDNEY FRINGE: PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
The joy of a fringe festival lies in those unexpected gems that take you entirely by surprise. As Sydney Fringe Festival launches this week, one show promising to fit the bill is Pearls Before Swine: an Evening with Orson Welles. This intimate one-man theatre show charts the rise and fall of one of cinema’s most enigmatic characters. Infamously temperamental and disarmingly clever, Orson Welles was a film prodigy and directed Citizen Kane at only 25. But his tragic decline and larger-than-life personality made him an almost mythical character. “Let’s face it, he was a genius,” says writer and star Blake Erickson, but, “There is a human being underneath that myth that I really wanted to get to.” The show uses Welles’ own words almost entirely, uncovering the man beneath the headlines. “Some of the things he says can come across as so phenomenally egotistical, you think, ‘How can this man be serious?’” says Erickson. Of course, he wasn’t. “People don’t really know him. I would love audiences to leave with a sense of knowing him better.”
Sept 12-22 (5 shows), The Fuse Box, Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria Rd, Marrickville, $20-24, thesydneyfringe.com.au
BY NICOLETTE LORRAWAY
