LAKE DISAPPOINTMENT
Image: Laura Scrivano
Lake Disappointment
by Luke Mullins and Lachlan Philpot
directed by Janice Muller
“Kane and me were both rising stars. I was rising to the top of the hand-modelling world and Kane was doing his plays. Kane got his first action film and I became his double. We clicked. Everyone said so. The director said so. And it’s there, on screen.”
A new Australian work by Luke Mullins and Lachlan Philpott, Lake Disappointment plunges beneath the surface of an image obsessed world and strums an unnerving riff on contemporary identity.
Performed by Helpmann Award winning actor Luke Mullins and directed by Janice Muller, with an atmospheric sound design by James Brown and stunning lighting by Matt Cox, Lake Disappointment premiered at Carriageworks, Sydney in April 2016 to critical and audience acclaim.
‘‘Do anything to secure a ticket. It is the most complete and unexpected work of theatre I’ve seen in a long time.:”
StageNoise
“**** …beautifully performed and powerfully staged....drop what you are doing in order to see this…"
Jason Blake, Sydney Morning Herald
*****
“…a seriously smart, rigorously planned piece of writing and
theatre, top to bottom."
TimeOut
Directed by Janice Muller
Compostion & Sound Design: James Brown
Designer: Michael Hankin
Lighting Design: Matt Cox
Associate Designer: Charlie Edward-Davis
Projection: James Brown
Nominated for:
Best New Australian Work, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Sound Design at the 2017 Sydney Theatre Awards
Winner Best Lighting Design
Beautifully performed and powerfully staged, this is the most intriguing work of theatre in Sydney at the moment. Drop what you need to in order to see this. Jason Blake Sydney Morning Herald
When Lake Disappointment returns or is produced elsewhere – and it has to be – do anything to secure a ticket. It is the most complete and unexpected work of theatre I’ve seen in a long time and it was a privilege to see it.
Lake Disappointment is not only intensely fascinating but also disquieting too. The synergy between all the production’s elements is remarkable.
Yet another brilliant performance (by Luke Mullins) in a career already littered with them.
This is a visually bold, but often very simple, production by director Janice Muller, which makes spectacular and intelligent use of the space. It’s an incredibly nuanced performance (by Mullins) — almost filmic in its physical and vocal details — and one of the strongest I’ve seen all year.
Ben Neutze Daily Review
Lake Disappointment is an elaborate assemblage of reflections and surfaces that constantly asks you to think about the construction of narrative and identity and ‘art’.
But Lake Disappointment seems to be about something deeper still: our protagonist – as performed by Mullins, and as written in the text of his character’s adoring and homoerotic tributes to Kane – seems to be a queer man in a straight-man’s world, forced to perform heteronormativity ad nauseum. On one level, this is a play about (to borrow a phrase from one of this week’s most moving pieces of writing) the structural violence experienced by non-straight-white-men/women in the film and theatre industries – and beyond. Dee Jefferson TIMEOUT.