NEVILLE LANCE
A highlight of the Bathurst Country Affair last weekend (August 9-11), was Corinne Willoughby’s show at The Stage on the Village Green on Friday afternoon. Played to a full house, the diminutive actress’s “LAST WILLOUGHBY ….. and Testament” was a tour de force in every respect.
It is an autobiographical journey through her life, allowing the audience to learn everything that there is to know about her and considerably more through her invented characters, each of which tells us a little bit more about some of her ‘life’s lessons learnt’.
Directed and also partnered on stage by the very capable Louwrens Orsmond as a foil and sounding board to get across some of the more obscure messages, Louwrens and Corinne draw us very quickly into her fascinating history.
Starting with the story in her late teens/early twenties she grips the audience with a no-holds-barred account of her early relationships – her marriage – divorce – and more relationships.
The theatre was there at the outset, and has been the craft that she has sailed on through her entire life. She acts, she sings – but she can’t dance (I wonder if that is really true?). The characters that she has written into the show are myriad, and trying to describe any of them would do them a gross injustice. Suffice to say they cover the entire spectrum of a life well lived, and equally well observed. They are characters whom we have all known in one form or another, but never met – until now that is, and now we know them intimately.
They range from Mama Davis, Dolores (a waitress in the Heartbreak Cafe), Dominee Tienie, and the absolutely hilarious Representative of the VVV. In this case the VVV is the Vrolike Vroue Vereeniging (as opposed to the other one!). There is a piece about a Subway Prophet (herself), she sings Julie London’s ‘Cry me a River’ beautifully, and does a solid blues rendition in ‘Life is mighty fine’. She tells a hilarious ‘Lame Joke’, and does something quite moving called ‘Scars’. There is a very moving piece ‘He is everywhere’ about her brother Guy who passed a few years ago – a passing she is still trying to get over. And finally, “Ode to the Bathurst Arms” where she resides – a bittersweet summary of some of Bathurst’s more colourful and questionable characters.
It is essential that all Oos-Kaapenaars catch this show, and I would encourage everyone from East London down through Port Alfred to Port Elizabeth who has a venue of any kind to contact Corinne and book this show. You will not be sorry. Get all the pics of the show HERE.
- Bathurst resident Neville Lance is (among other things) a photographer and writer with a special interest in local and regional arts and culture. Find him and follow him at https://www.nevillelance.com
- This article was first published in Talk of the Town, August 15, 2024. The newspaper serving the communities of Ndlambe and the Sunshine Coast, with a weekly wrap of Makhanda news, is available at stores from early on Thursdays.
