Old Fitzroy Theatre, July 15. Until August 12
Louis Nowra’s new play, his first in a decade, throws its arms around the shoulders of the genres of memory play and site-specific documentary and gives them a big, beery man-hug.
In the guise of his theatrical alter ego Lewis – of Summer of the Aliensand Cosi fame – Nowra brings together past and present, the living and the dead in a character-driven shaggy dog of a show that revels in a culture of old school rascality and eulogises its passing.
Some of the stories and most of the characters also appear in Woolloomooloo, Nowra’s recently published social history of the suburb, but even so I wouldn’t take any of it as hard fact. As in an angler’s report of the day’s adventures, the fish get bigger, the fight to land them more intense.
