fortyfivedownstairs in association with Melbourne Festival presents
Whiteley’s Incredible Blue
… an hallucination
By Barry Dickins
Directed by Julian Meyrick
Associate Director & Designer Meredith Rogers
Book online for Whiteley’s Incredible Blue here.
What lies inside the imaginations of an artist and addict?
In the intimate surrounds of the fortyfivedownstairs theatre, accompanied by the jazz sounds of The Calvert George Fine trio, the capricious genius of Brett Whiteley bursts once more into incandescent life.
A hallucinatory exploration of Whiteley’s life and art, Whiteley’s Incredible Blue is a one-man theatrical fever dream, an urgent swell of colour, sound and language.
Cast in the luminescent ultramarine blue that became the artist’s hallmark, and interwoven with a live free-jazz performance, Whiteley’s Incredible Blue burrows a rambling excavation through the thoughts and digressions, passions and fears of a man – Australian art’s most vivid and conflicted character.
Penned by award-winning playwright and Whiteley biographer, Barry Dickins, and performed by the acclaimed Neil Pigot, this is the world premiere of a new and controversial rendering of Whiteley’s life.
Less pure biography than a journey into the swirling imagination and creeping addictions that pushed Whiteley to the very edges of artistic expression, Whiteley’s Incredible Blue is an unflinching and poetic depiction of a remarkable mind, both tormented and free, hurtling toward destruction in the moment of greatest creative release.
Lighting Designer Kerry Saxby
Sound Designer Chris Wenn
Stage Manager Claire Shepherd
Featuring Neil Pigot
Musicians Robert Calvert, Robert George, Pietro Fine
Venue: fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne 3000
Dates: Thursday 13 – Sunday 23 October
Times: Tuesday to Sunday 8pm, Friday & Saturday 8pm & 10pm
Prices: $45 Full / $37.50 Concession / 10+ Group $40
Booking: Book online here
Whiteley’s Incredible Blue is produced and presented by fortyfivedownstairs in association with the Melbourne Festival and supported the Sunraysia Foundation, the Sidney Myer Fund and Yarra Trams.
Image by Jeff Busby, design by Millimetre.