The Les Robinson Story and Belle of the Cross

Sydney Independent Theatre Company has chosen a fitting program for its finale at the Old Fitzroy Theatre at Woolloomooloo – the revival of two short plays, both about unusual people, and both set in the colourful and historical precinct that SITCO has called home for over 30 of its productions.

The Les Robinson Storytraces the life of an eccentric writer and freelance journalist, who was part of Sydney’s bohemia scene from the 1920s to 1968. Playwright Kieran Carroll was inspired to find out more about Robinson after reading his “zany, vulnerable, wistful, absurd, very funny” stories in a copy of The Giraffe’s Uncle, his only published book.

Based on the material in these stories, and further frustrated research, Carroll pieced together Robinson’s story, and together with actor Martin Portus and director Ray Hadley, resurrected Les Robinson in a moving reconstruction that was highly acclaimed in both Sydney (Newtown Theatre 2011) and Melbourne (La Mama 2013).

Portus, Hadley and singer Matt Thomson revive this production at The Old Fitzroy – and it has lost none of its whimsy or its pertinent comment on the struggle to be oneself despite social conventions and restrictions.

Martin Portus makes Les Robinson and Sydney’s underground art life live again. He plays Les with empathy and humour, finding the “Kafkaist fantasist” of his critics. As a younger Les, he engages and beguiles the audience with snippets of his writing and funny, personal anecdotes. He makes him almost dapper, confident in his bohemian life in derelict houses and caves around the harbour. Twenty five years later, older, cold and a little lonely, he reminisces about his parents and their aspirations for their son, (Oh Dad … Oh Mum) and his friend, the poet Kenneth Slessor – but he still has no regrets about the choices he made!

Matt Thomson opens the production with Slessor’s poem “Moving Day at Midnight”, set to music by Darryl Emerson, and with “Wolloomooloo Lair” takes the set – and Les – to less glorious days.

Belle of the Cross looks at a different aspect of the Darlinghurst area – the street people of Kings Cross.

Based on eight years’ living in the Cross, Angelika Fremd writes of the street people she met and observed and their “fragile and dramatic lives”.  Though the play is a little too long, and a little laboured at times, through the creation of Belle, played by Gertraud Ingeborg, Fremd does bring to life their “camaraderie, kindness, generosity, humour, heroism and tragedy”.

Directed by David Ritchie, Ingeborg finds much of this as well as their tenacity and inherent strength. She is appealing, reaching out to the audience for understanding and acceptance of the choices people make and the rich, but gritty life of the Cross. She creates vivid images of cold winters and colourful people, including a sympathetic stripper played by Colleen Cook. (NB. The program doesn’t advise of nudity).

Though some might see both plays as reminiscences of the past, one does not have to walk too far from the Old Fitzroy to see the ‘Belles’ of today, huddled in their doorways, on their benches, under their overpasses.

Congratulations SITCO for reminding us of this by reviving these vignettes of Sydney life – and best wishes for a new life in another venue.

Carol Wimmer

Photography: Katy Green Loughrey.