Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Harry Joy is the blessed Australian – a childhood of mystical innocence, a home stuffed with love, he brings a smile to all he meets. Then, one warm afternoon on the front lawn, he dies. It’s only for a few minutes – he’s revived. But the world he wakes to is changed; his wife, children and friends all now seem avaricious monsters. And so it dawns on Harry Joy: he hasn’t survived his heart attack at all. He is in Hell.
'Enter Honey Barbara, a hippy from the rainforest, wise to the ways of the big city. She and Harry melt back into the verdant bush, where their children tell a story of a Paradise Found. Found.' (Production summary)
Production Details
-
Performed at the Malthouse Theatre in the 2018 season, 4 May - 2 June.
Director: Matthew Lutton
Cast: Marco Chiappi, Will McDonald, Amber McMahon, Charlotte Nicdao, Susan Prior, Anna Samson, Mark Coles Smith, and Toby Truslove.
Set & Costume Designer: Marg Howel
Lighting Designer: Paul Jackson
Sound Designer & Composer: Stefan Gregory
Performed at the Belvoir's Upstairs Theatre, Surry Hills, New South Wales 9 June - 15 July 2018, again directed by Matthew Lutton and with substantially the same cast and the same crew.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Bliss (Malthouse Theatre)
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2018; Australian Book Review , June-July no. 402 2018; (p. 65)'The opening of Peter Carey’s satirical novel Bliss (1981), where the body of Harry Joy lies dead on the lawn while his spirit hovers above, is one of the most memorable in modern Australian literature. Harry’s laconic out-of-body narration hovers like a spare and airy jazz riff until a defibrillator jolts him back into the land of the living, and a newly recognised living hell. It’s not an easy scene to stage, and in Tom Wright’s adaptation at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, it’s been dismembered.' (Introduction)
-
Bliss (Malthouse Theatre)
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: ABR : Arts 2018; Australian Book Review , June-July no. 402 2018; (p. 65)'The opening of Peter Carey’s satirical novel Bliss (1981), where the body of Harry Joy lies dead on the lawn while his spirit hovers above, is one of the most memorable in modern Australian literature. Harry’s laconic out-of-body narration hovers like a spare and airy jazz riff until a defibrillator jolts him back into the land of the living, and a newly recognised living hell. It’s not an easy scene to stage, and in Tom Wright’s adaptation at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, it’s been dismembered.' (Introduction)
