by Reg Livermore
at Comedy Theatre
until October 30, 1999
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Leonard is back. He vibrates with vitriol and despair. Reg
Livermore's alterego is incarcerated in The Twilight Home in Katoomba,
sometimes chained to a verandah post so that he cannot bite the nurses nor tear
off his clothes and terrorise the neighbours.
Leonard, who appeared in previous Livermore shows, is the
featured character in Home Sweet Home: Leonard's Last Hurrah. He is now
decrepit, mad as a hatter but still angry with everything and everybody.
He is particularly
irate about his wife, Gloria, who could not even bear to be in the same nursing
home with him, his daughter, Nola, and her "poofter husband",
Francis. Leonard has never heard of political correctness - luckily or there
would be no show.
This, my first time seeing Reg live on stage, was like a
bolt of lightning. He is versatile, individual and exceptionally skilful as a
writer, clown and performer of song. He
has impeccable comic timing, perfect control, a colourful vocal quality and a
profound sensitivity.
He inhabits his character totally, almost spookily. His
interpretation is eccentric, his movement constantly surprising and his
dialogue vivacious, scatological, lateral and poetic.
But it is the poignancy which makes Leonard so compelling.
He is hilarious, outrageous and peculiar but his heart is on his sleeve so that
we see and hear his pain as well as his hilarious belligerence. He may be an
old bastard but he has been emotionally battered too.
Reg scampers about alone on the Comedy Theatre stage that is
empty but for a single chair. He wears a scruffy 18th century wig and a brocade
coat and stands in front of a screwy baroque wallpapered backdrop.
He babbles about his misogyny and the evils of feminism. He
spits venom at the Sister Goodmede (Reg again), the nurses, nuns, his visitor
and his dead mother. The only person he loved is his weak dead porcelain doll
father..
Reg's final song, "Second Chance," is a
celebration of his return to the stage. He more than deserves his Order of
Australia for services to the Australian Theatre
by Kate Herbert
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