It's been a wild but wonderful ride!

Brink Bits spoke with Kay Jamieson, the Producer of Brink's Harbinger by Matthew Whittet, on the day of the closing performance....

Photo: Chris Herzfeld

Harbinger has been an amazing journey and a fun experience for me personally - and a hugely artistic success for Brink. There is strong interest from several interstate presenters and there is even the possibility of a Scandinavian season! Bring it on!

It has come from a delightfully eccentric, fantasy-fuelled and music-obsessed writer/actor, three sensational performers and a fabulous creative and production team - all of whom collaborated to give birth to what has been most recently described as the 'darkly enjoyable' Harbinger.

It is a unique theatrical experience - in its ambiguity, its daggy humour, its dark undertones, its simple staging, its crazy fantastical ride - one in which the audience becomes totally complicit.

Photo: Chris Herzfeld

It's different. It's unexpected. It's moving. It's very funny. It's not neat and tidy. Indeed it goes for the jug(ular)! But only those who have seen the show will understand and enjoy that joke! Others may take its literal meaning and fear being disturbed. Indeed I was amused to hear recently that a friend of mine tried to get a group together to see the show - a group who attend theatre regularly - but they 'didn't want to be disturbed!' Harbinger isn't predictable and it doesn't tie things up neatly at the end. It doesn't give you answers. It leaves you thinking...

We always knew that Harbinger would appeal to Gen X and Gen Y and the 'next' generation, whatever you are called! What has been fantastic for Brink is to receive countless emails and phone-calls - and posts and tweets and comments - from the young AND the elderly (pardon the parody!) who have so completely engaged with Harbinger - some of whom have come back twice and brought more of their young-at-heart 70 y/o friends. They had the courage to go on Maddy's adventure, just went with it, accepted that the play throws up many possibilities and is deliberately ambiguous and unsettling. But also exceptionally entertaining. We made a word cloud from the myriad responses.

Countless people are telling us their differing interpretations have resulted in stimulating and endless post-show analysis, not just hours but for days after, and that the experience has stayed with them long after the play has ended.

As a theatre company what more could we ask?!

Photo: Chris Herzfeld

All's well that ends well

A typographical error in the opening night invite for Harbinger led to one hapless Mr D passing on RSVPs to Brink that were left on his answer machine! To say thank you for his understanding and co-operation and by way of apology for the inconvenience to him Brink offered him tix to see the show. Today he wrote:

I am very pleased to have seen the play, which I enjoyed enormously. I don't go to the theatre as much as I would like - there is something intrinsically exciting about the whole process. Harbinger was thrilling because it broke so many conventions, though I admit to getting a bit lost at the end. The actors were all brilliant, and the stage craft I hardly noticed, it all worked so well.

We will all be telling people about it for quite a while - you deserve a big success with this!

After the show the four of us enjoyed a debrief downstairs. It's a beautiful venue, so all in all we had a lovely night. Thank you for that...