SYNOPSIS

In a dressing room backstage of a run down theatre, sits Robert Winter. He is on an interminable tour of the one man show, Eleven Epsisodes from the Torture, Trial and Execution of Monsieur Thenardier, based on the villain from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. With only his stage manager, Mo, for company, the line between reality and play-acting becomes blurred as Winter struggles to believe in his life and to live up to his theatrical creed "the show must go on".

Revealing, funny and moving, Winter's Discontent is a theatrical tour de force from one of Australia's finest actors: William Zappa. Best known for his award winning work with Bell Shakespeare, STC and Ensemble Theatre, William Zappa wrote Winter's Discontent inspired by his multi award winning portrayal of the Inn Keeper Thenardier in Les Miserables.

With a command of language and stage craft that is astonishing, Zappa exposes the actor's joy and despair as his hero faces his personal demons and the often comic tragedy of his own life.

FEATURE REVIEW

WINTER'S DISCONTENT written and performed by William Zappa is an illuminating and emotional experience, an unmissable experience. For, Zappa reveals the actor as craftsmen - artist, which is the extraordinary, and the everyman which is, us, him, and what we often mistake as ordinary, both in the one entity. What this work shows us, who usually sit and watch our storytellers in our world. And Zappa, certainly, is one of Australia's great storytellers.

Firstly, the magical power of the prepared gift if the talented performer is revealingly shown to us in this wonderful monologue. Winter (William Zappa) arrives in his dressing room and prepares himself for a performance of a play based on the Victor Hugo character Thenardier from the novel LES MISERABLES, not the musical. We witness his physical and vocal ‘warming up’. We watch him make up. We watch him disrobe and dress in costume. We watch an external transformation. Magic, in front of our eyes. But better and more startlingly, the magic of willing possession is witnessed by us, we watch Winter breathe in and relax into the shamanistic state of the allowed possession of Winter’s body, into this Thenardier. Periodically we see, miraculously, Winter breathe out and dispossess, exorcise the spirit of his imaginative powers that have formulated Thenardier, back to the man, Winter, and then back again - at will. This is a behind the scenes look at the creative tools of the actor in action in the act of creation. It is doubly amazing because it is not just Winter and Thenardier we are privileged in watching, but the originator of this, for Zappa, both as writer and actor begins to surface into our consciousness as well. Three spirits, three mystic beings, three creations of a visionary.

Secondly, what Zappa does, in the person of Winter, is let us become credent to the personal problems of the everyday man, actor – horrible confrontations with the finality of mortality and the consequences of his own story’s appetites and activities that has wrought the circumstances for that fate to unfurl. The struggle between the power of his gift as actor, as Thenardier, and his failure in his real life role as ‘father’ – a gift he begins to doubt, almost despair of. The struggle to embrace the conflict between his responsibilities as an actor, both, as a storyteller and in life, become the grief of the work. A pregnant dilemma for us all, in greater and lesser degrees of consciousness. Actors all.” Kevin Jackson’s Theatre Reviews Aug 2010

OTHER REVIEWS

“…And Zappa proves again he is not an ordinary actor. Possessing a poet's affinity for the beauty of language and a mouth as articulate in mute expression as in speech, he makes predictable text compelling on stage, and good material mesmerising. His powers of physical characterisation are amazing.”Mark Hopkins - Sydney Morning Herald

“In this great show, William Zappa celebrates the transformative power of theatre and its layers.” John McCallum – The Australian

"…Zappa’s porformance reminds us that acting of this caliber is an art not a pastime, an art capable of stirring our emotions profoundly, making us laugh and even challenging our perceptions.” Glenn Burns - Canberra Times

CREATIVES

Written & Performed by William Zappa

Original Direction by Maeliosa Stafford

Set Design by Imogen Keen

Lighting Design by Gillian Schwab

Current production developed for The Street Theatre, Canberra (Solo at the Street program 2010)

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