Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2017 – The Gent, a one-man play exploring relationships, mental ill health and the search for internal peace.
Date: Thursday 17 Aug 2017
Morgan Stern has particular power and resonance because many of the team from Company of Rogues have an interest in mental ill health through their personal or professional lives.
Part ghost, part protector “The Gent” is 221 years old and has been assigned to the other side of the planet to minister to Morgan, a young modern Sydneysider living with Schizophrenia.
Shifting between families, centuries and hemispheres, Morgan Stern is an enthralling and ultimately uplifting one-man play exploring relationships, mental ill health and the search for internal peace.
Its setting is a barely understood realm – the human mind. It is deeply informed by the experience of AWGIE (Australian Writers’ Guild) award-winning playwright Gina Schien’s own brother.
A moving monologue, directed by Goldele Rayment, Morgan Stern was described by critic Lisa Thatcher as: “A troubling, beautiful, uplifting ninety minutes that will leave you breathless”. Veteran actor Graeme Rhodes has been praised by The Sydney Morning Herald for his “exceptional performance” as The Gent.
The production commands the audience’s attention throughout as the English Georgian gentleman slowly recovers heartbreaking memories of his daughter, whom he committed to the infamous Bethlem insane asylum. With these come a growing realisation that he must make amends and try to save Morgan from the same fate as his daughter.
Rayment says: “This is a powerful piece of storytelling about two families in different centuries, cultures and countries who share the same search for release from the turmoil of life. It’s a play with a sense of Gothic tragedy but which is filled with compassion in its approach to Schizophrenia – an illness that remains feared and misunderstood.”
Places, people and stories crystallise and dissolve throughout the performance, and the image of a one-eyed ornamental goldfish will come back to haunt you.
Morgan Stern has particular power and resonance because many of the team from Company of Rogues have an interest in mental ill health through their personal or professional lives.