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Three Furies: Scenes from the Life of Francis Bacon 
A Play with Songs by Stephen Sewell
Presented by UWA Perth International Arts Festival & Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts
Simon Burke and Socratis Otto. Photo: Trent O’Donnell  
 
Writer
Stephen Sewell
Director
Jim Sharman
Composer
Basil Hogios
Designer
Brian Thomson
Costume Designer
Alice Lau
Lighting Designer
Performers
Musicians
Damien Cooper
Simon Burke, Socratis Otto, Paul Capsis
Basil Hogios, Mark Cauvin, Peter Kennard
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Three Furies is a bold and visceral cabaret of the celebrated and controversial life of Francis Bacon, written by one of Australia's most provocative dramatists.
 
This visionary portrait has been enthusiastically acclaimed for its startling insight and inventiveness. The 2005 Sydney Festival premiere season was awarded a Helpmann Award for Best Direction (Jim Sharman), and Sydney Theatre Awards for Best Mainstage Production, Best New Australian Work (Stephen Sewell) and Best Score or Sound Design (Basil Hogios).

Sewell’s remarkable portrait of Bacon and his stormy relationship with his muse, petty criminal George Dyer, is an audacious tragicomedy. Taking Bacon's own inspirations as its cue, Sewell's interwoven tragicomedy fuses Greek tragedy, in the form of the three Furies, with the heady cabaret of Weimar Germany.

Angry, mad, sordid, sensual, brutal, poetic and sublime, Sewell and director Jim Sharman's Three Furies gives voice to Bacon's silent scream. Three Furies is a portrait every bit as surprising, revealing and illuminating as a Bacon painting.

   
  History: Sydney Festival & Auckland Festival, 2005. Perth International Arts Festival & Adelaide Festival, 2006. 
      
  This project has been assisted by the Australian Government’s major Festivals Initiative, managed by the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body, in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festivals Inc, Sydney Festival, Perth International Arts Festival and Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts. 
Downloads  
Show Information Pack (46.0 K DOC)
Archived Programs
 

"Wildly illuminating, dark and unsentimental… one of the brightest and boldest bio-plays I’ve seen."

The Age

"Stephen Sewell’s intoxicating cabaret of the great and difficult artist Francis Bacon is exciting, absorbing and brilliantly performed. "

Sydney Morning Herald

"This bleak yet rich, sensual yet chilling, visceral yet cerebral psycho-cabaret is a compelling and intense 90-plus minutes."

The Sunday Telegraph

   
 

 

   
 
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