Popular SA Newsreader A Playwright

What happens when a news reader’s way with words extends beyond the news desk into playwriting?

Answer: a library tour of his latest plays, of course. Lesley Reed reports.

Former ABC TV and BBC World Service newsreader and presenter, John Ovenden is well-known in South Australia, having been a past face of ABC news in the state. John now works as a theatre reviewer, but perhaps less known to locals is the fact that he is also a playwright.

FAME and FORTUNE are two of John’s short plays and for a while now they have been in rehearsal by some fine local actors.

Now playwright and cast are ready to launch these two contemporary comedies with John Ovendon’s Strolling Players Library Tour 2016.

October 21^st will see the beginning of the Library Tour, with the actors presenting moved readings of both plays at Stirling Library in the Adelaide hills. The tour moves on to Mount Barker Library on October 23.

FAME is the story of a group of retired ABC announcers who yearn for the good old days when strict standards mattered. The announcers want to form their own community radio station through the ABC’s auspices. In doing so, they discover a branch of the organisation it knows nothing about.

The other play, FORTUNE, is a farce about a married couple who just want a quiet night at home, until a door-to-door salesman, divorcing neighbours with monetary problems and the appearance of a mysterious parcel thwart their plans.

While John describes himself as ‘a complete ham’, the others involved in the Strolling Players Library Tour are certainly well-credentialed in terms of acting!

Stirling audiences are well acquainted with Vicki Barrett’s ability to play comedy, while Bridget Walters is well known to State Theatre audiences.

Bridget’s acting career on stage, screen and television has called on her to play some strange characters. Among them: a friend to an anthropomorphic bear, a homeless vagrant, a whiskey sodden Irish granny, a sophisticated socialite, a grunge rock musician, an American schoolteacher and a revolver-toting lesbian. Add to that a Russian mother, the Australian President, an Episcopalian preacher, an eminent professor dying of cancer, the village witch and a cantankerous pensioner… and you have a diverse list of characters indeed.

Now Bridget will be a Strolling Player and her acting ability, together with Vicki Barrett’s will be matched by experienced male performers Tony Busch and Brian Knott, who have been stalwarts of Adelaide theatre for years.

It all sounds very intriguing to me and no doubt to many other local theatre lovers as well, so I suggest you pop along to Stirling or Mount Barker Libraries by 6.30 pm on the dates mentioned to see just what fun characters and circumstances John Ovendon’s way with words has created now.

WHEN AND WHERE:

Wednesday October 21^st, 6.30pm, Stirling Library.

Friday October 23^rd, 6.30pm, Mount Barker Library.

Images (from top): John Ovendon (photographer: John Hemmings), Vicki Barret and Bridget Walters.