Breakout Performance of 2006
The Blonde, The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead's Lucy Peacock
Lucy Peacock, at a crossroads in her acting career, was looking for a juicy gig to sink her teeth into. Then she got a call from Australia.
Lucy Peacock's good friend, actor / director Geordie Johnson, was on the phone. Johnson had just seen Aussie playwright Robert Hewett’s The Blonde, The Brunette, and The Vengeful Redhead,and he was convinced that Peacock should do this piece at the Stratford Festival in Ontario..
Under Johnson’s capable direction, Peacock strutted her stuff to packed houses at Stratford ‘s Studio Theatre in Hewett’s pithy whodunnit, the first Australian play at Stratford.
Audiences finally saw a different side – well seven different sides - of Lucy Peacock, a classical actress who has played many a plum role in Shakespeare’s canon from Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing to Lady M in Macbeth to Portia in The Merchant of Venice to Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream in addition to starring roles in Noel Coward's Fallen Angels, John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Jerry Herman's Hello Dolly.
Predictably, Robert Hewett's one-woman show, which Peacock first performed at London's Grand Theatre in 2005 to rave reviews, also proved to be a 2006 hit. In elegant silhouette Peacock used wigs, and a screen – à la the actor prepares – using Micheal Gianfrancesco's innovative virtual envionment film backdrop while deftly switching from role to role and location to location. Peacock also left key props on the stage after each change of persona to help the audience clarify the snowball events in this suburban tale of the unexpected.
Peacock pieced together tragic and comedic circumstances through seven characters that lead housewife Rhonda Russell (The Redhead) to commit a misguided crime of passion – a ripple effect which becomes an emotional tidal wave when Rhonda sees her husband with another woman (The Blonde) at the mall.
Peacock was magnificent showcasing her cast of characters from an old woman and a troubled four year-old-boy to nosy neighbour Lynette (the Brunette) and the showstopper: Rhonda’s beer-swilling, foul-mouth hubby Graham.
“Graham just showed up one day. I don’t try to analyze Graham too much because he scares me a little bit but he just showed up. Weirdly enough he was one of the easiest characters to pin. I have no idea why. I don’t examine that too closely but I grew up in a house of seven kids – three of them boys – and maybe it’s that. I don’t know. I’ve always hung out with the boys. That’s the kind of girl I am. I have no idea where Graham came from but it is also really well written.”
Hazzah ! For those who missed it, The Blonde, The Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead returns to Stratford Festival's Studio Theatre from May 31 to Aug 26, 2007.
***Honorable 2006 Theatre Rebels -- Stephen Ouimette for having the cojones and pearls to play German tranzi Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf in Canstage’s I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright and Peter Krantz for having the cojones, bodacious bandages and false nose to play James Griffin in Michael O'Brien's audacious adaptation of H.G. Wells' classic The Invisible Man at Shaw – can you say coolomundo comic book kitsch?
