Lennon: Through a Glass Onion returns to the Redland Performing Arts Centre for the third time with a performance at 8pm on Saturday, January 14.
Staged by actor/musician John Waters and singer/pianist Stewart D’Arrietta, Lennon: Through a Glass Onion, is part-concert, part-biography and features 31 iconic hits including Imagine, Woman, Working Class Hero, and Jealous Guy and Lennon's collaborations with Paul McCartney, including, Strawberry Fields Forever, Revolution and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. New to the show is Cold Turkey and an accompanying monologue on the death of Lennon’s mother Julia.
“He had a brief flirtation with heavy drugs. We thought it appropriate to look at that. An addiction is about filling a hole in your life,” Waters said.
Waters said the show just “won’t go away”, having started in 1992. He said the show had evolved over that time, but was fundamentally unchanged.
“People keep asking for it and we keep bringing it back. It’s struck a chord with people. It’s something completely different,” he said.
Besides touring Australia extensively, the show also ran for a 16-week season Off-Broadway in New York.
“To be embraced by New Yorkers was a great reward for all of us who worked so hard to get our show there. It truly felt as though Glass Onion had given the city what it needed, to reconcile its own sense of loss of a much loved ‘son’, as John Lennon came to be. Night after night, our audiences stood to acknowledge us, and it doesn't get much better than that,” Waters said.
Waters said he never tired of performing the show.
“This is my spark. It’s my lifeblood to get up on stage and offer live performance, and if I can achieve that with a lot of touring, big things can happen. I never tire of being on stage where I can talk and sing. This material is always exciting to me,” Waters said.
Waters said a different audience made every show a different experience.
“There’s not just me and Stewart in that room. A live audience is a living, breathing thing that very much influences the flow of the show,” he said.
The show has attracted a constantly new audience, but also its diehards with some returning up to 14 times.
“You form a bond with these people and also with the town and the venue. I enjoy being a strolling troubadour and getting to know an area. The Redlands is close to Brisbane but still has that local feel. There’s a friendliness about provincial venues,” he said.
The song Glass Onion was John Lennon’s postscript to The Beatles. It had such a strong image of crystal ball-gazing and peeling away the layers that it inspired the format for this show – a kaleidoscope collage of song, word, emotion and image. For the audience this is either an emotional trip down memory lane or a wonderful introduction to the life and times of one of the most fascinating icons of our time.
Tickets are $55 and can be booked at the RPAC Box Office, 2–16 Middle Street, Cleveland, on 3829 8131 or on www.rpac.com.au