Fraught Outfit and Malthouse Theatre
5 July 2013
Beckett Theatre
to 14 July
malthousetheatre.com.au
I missed Persona last year. I came to regret this, but a consistent rule of reviewing is that you will miss the show you should see. It sold out its Theatre Works season, won a pile of Green Room Awards and I heard, "Did you see Persona?" too many times to dare miss its return at Malthouse.
I hadn't seen the Ingmar Bergman film that it's based on, but YouTube shows me how much it honours the film while being something that could only be told in a theatre. It's one of those works where direction (Adena Jacobs), design (Dayna Morrissey, set and costume; Danny Pettingill, lighting; Russell Goldsmith, sound) and performance (Meredith Penman, Karen Sibbing and Daniel Schlusser) are inseparable and the audience are as immersed in the process as the creators
It's bloody good.
And it deserves much more than a hurried response, so please read Alison Croggon's Theatre Notes review. She's since seen this season as well and says it's just as wonderful.
