Jack Hibberd's A Stretch of the Imagination pays homage to Joyce

Photograph by Bernard Peasley

Monk O'Neill (played by Wayne Pearn) is a reader of Joyce. 

Bloomsday in Melbourne

proudly presents

Jack Hibberd's iconic (Irish) Australian play

A Stretch of the Imagination

Two performances only

When: 19 November at 2.00pm for 2.30pm  and 5.00pm for 5.30pm 

Have a drink before the show!

Where: The Amphitheatre, 5 Courbrant Court, Mont Albert North.

come dressed for outdoors (jacket and hat, and hopefully not umbrella)

Easy reach of buses along Belmore Rd. 201, 302 (ask to be let down near Boondara St.)

Cost: $25. All proceeds to Bloomsday

BOOKINGS essential as space is strictly limited.

 A Stretch of the Imagination is the first offering of the Bloomsday season, a fundraiser with all proceeds supporting Bloomsday 2014.

The very gifted WAYNE PEARN (Hoy Polloy Theatre)  first played Monk O'Neill nearly two decades ago, and is embracing the virtuoso role again with unconcealed enthusiasm, relishing not having to whiten his hair and being able to draw on those extra dimensions of understanding that twenty years brings. It's a play very much about ageing and dying, though it's far from being sad or solemn. It is an over-the-top celebration of life itself, or at least of a certain kind of life - Monk is a recluse, a misanthrope, a would-be Don Juan, a misfit.

Wayne Pearn as Monk O'Neill                                    Director, Renee Huish, at the first rehearsal.

Photographs by Bernard Peasley     

Jack Hibberd's iconic (Irish) Australian play of the 70s is widely regarded as a masterpiece, and has attracted some of Australia's finest actors to the role: Peter Cummins and Max Gillies among them. It ranges broadly, and it dips its lid to Joyce quite explicitly but also implicitly. Monk is as richly a man who lives in his body as Leopold Bloom does. His fantasies may not be quite as florid, but the play does demand a certain stretching of credibility as one enters Monk's libidinal and fervid memories of women he's known, friends who have let him down, books he has enjoyed, opportunities to live the high life relived.  He may have started his career at Xavier and clearly is well-read if not well-educated, so the journey to One Tree Hill and his lonely is all the more intriguing. His is a body in the advanced stages of decay, and these are dealt with comically and graphically, and sometimes for maximum comic shock-value. He is the kind of man who rages against the failing of the light and who will not go gently into the pit.

Come early and enjoy a drink and a nibble, and enjoy a play in the open air. Please pray for good weather!

BOOKINGS essential as space is strictly limited.

or Phone Bob on 03 9898 2900