The true love story of Charmian Clift, George Johnston and My Brother Jack
By Sue Smith
Directed by Sam Strong
09 March - 06 April
Bille Brown Theatre, Queensland Theatre
They were writers, dreamers and free spirits. In the 1950s, Australian authors Charmian Clift and George Johnston fled halfway across the world to the idyllic Greek island of Hydra, determined to carve out a bohemian living as artists.
As they revel in their picturesque community, far off the world’s literary map, inspiration for the great Australian work strikes. But a many-headed monster of jealousy, infidelity, illness and alcoholism also rises from the crystal blue waters of their sun-kissed island home.
Award-winning Sue Smith weaves the original writings of two of Australia’s literary icons into a moving relationship drama. She conjures the passion and intensity of the near mythical ‘King and Queen of Hydra’ as they follow their dream, only to end up in a Greek tragedy of their own making.
Leonard Cohen would become the most famous of those who settled on Hydra, where the roll-call of expatriates went beyond the emerging artists Clift and Johnston encouraged and befriended (including Australians Sidney Nolan, Rodney Hall, Mungo MacCallum and Robert Owen), and eventually spanned a long list of Europe’s political and entertainment elites. Again to quote Clift, “we had unwittingly started a sort of cult, since other foreigners followed our example and bought houses, too, and our quiet, cheap, remote little island became very fashionable and not really cheap or even quiet any more.”
Hydra: overview
by Paul Genoni and Tanya Dalziell
Authors of 'Half the Perfect World: Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955-1964' http://www.publishing.monash.edu/books/ ... 23096.html
As they mentioned Leonard in the above article I wondered if anyone, and if so who, would be playing his part and I found this at https://www.miragenews.com/logie-award- ... e-s-hydra/
It will be interesting to read the reviewsThe relationship between George Johnston and Charmian Clift is one of the great untold stories of Australian culture. On Hydra, the husband and wife writers joined a rich expat community, including painter Sidney Nolan and poet/musician Leonard Cohen.
Cast: Hugh Parker Vic/Leonard Cohen/Musician/Reporter 1
