Noni Hazlehurst stars in a one woman show called ‘The Lark’ which has made its way to Wollongong, opening at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre last night.
‘The Lark’ is an outstanding display of growth, love, and loss. It was despicably poignant and my vision got a little blurry about halfway through as I was just so invested in this story. Her nuanced facial expressions and body language were just so authentic and it felt very Australian. Despite sitting a packed theatre, it felt so intimate. It was just like listening to your own grandmother telling a story about how she grew up and getting distracted by stories about characters from the past with her little quips and side notes that are quintessential to the story even if you’re not really sure why. There were some well-placed laughs to break up the heavy feelings of moving on.
The premise of the story is so simple and yet, so beautiful. An old pub is about to be torn down as the suburb gentrifies and when it does, all these memories will be gone alongside it. People in 5, 10, 20 years will walk past and have no idea about the people who lived, worked, drank, laughed and cried in that building. From the first moment the lights went down and the sound effects of people chatting away in that very distinctive white noise only a pub can provide, I was leaning forward in anticipation. Hearing and seeing the love a daughter has for her father and the heartache of watching your parent grow old and fade away in front of you had me emotional.
Not only was the delivery astounding, but the writing was also well done. A script can make such an impact on the performance, as an actor can only do so much with the material in front of them, but ‘The Lark’ proved what can happen when a dynamic and well-curated script is brought to life by the right person. It was an hour and 15 minutes of just her on stage talking and it was like time warped and we had nowhere else to be. This story could’ve gone on forever and I would’ve been sat all the same. I could’ve grown old staring at that bar and listening to Noni Hazlehurst talk about anything at all.
The staging was elegant. Alongside her description of the interior, the actual set of just three bar stools, a single table and chair, the most beautiful wooden bar with a single beer tap with the empty shelves behind brought you straight into the little hole in the wall. Once the light came streaming in as the sun came down, I found myself holding my breath a little as we finally got to see just how lovely and peaceful that view was after she had talked about it throughout the show.
I feel like I could go on and on about each tiny moment of this production until I’m blue in the face or I too begin to sound like rain. I felt like a totally different person coming out of that theatre and I genuinely feel like it’s the kind of story that everyone should hear, as we all have some kind of story that deserves to be listened to.
Buy a ticket from the Merrigong website https://merrigong.com.au/shows/the-lark/ and call your parents or grandparents to tell them you love them. (Or take them with you to let Noni Hazlehurst say it for you).
To book tickets to The Lark, please visit https://merrigong.com.au/shows/the-lark/.
Photographer: Cameron Grant, Parenthesy
