John Waters considers Port Macquarie's Glasshouse a "happy hunting ground". "Particularly in January when there is a lot of people in the town," he says. "We like going up the coast and we're always welcomed back. It's fortunate for us we chose a subject matter people always interested in."
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Waters and colleague Stewart D'Arrietta will be back in January with their acclaimed show Lennon Through a Glass Onion.
"There are a lot of reasons why John Lennon remains a polarising figure. People regard him highly even if they didn't like his music. He was an angry young man, abandonded by both his parents. He found a creative outlet in songwriting and worked on himself. He was always learning, and wanted a new way to look at the world. He learned not to be so selfish, but sadly was gunned down as he was truly coming in to his own."
Waters says some people were confused by what he did in the early part of his solo career, but he found some really interesting songs from that time. "When you have $500 million you can afford to become a house husband, so he stopped his recording activity. But he didn't stop being involved in the world."
Many people may have blamed Yoko Ono for the breakup of The Beatles. "But when the durable nature of their relationship and devotion to each other became clear, people started to say, 'who are we to criticise'."
Fans of Lennon's music will hear all or part of 31 songs throughout the show. "Some are used just as quotes and interest points." Sexy Sadie is one some may not know, but Waters says it is a satire on their time with the Marahishi [Mahesh Yogi]. "Strawberry Fields Forever, represented the change in songwriting he was going through. I love performing that song."
Initially the audience drawn to the production were Baby Boomers "because it's our actual soundtrack". "But there are a rising number of millennials wearing John Lennon NYC t-shirts [at the show] which makes me happy."
The show has gone through some changes since Waters and D'Arrietta first toured it 1992. Waters says they are now looking at touring an expanded musical concert version in the near future, with orchestras from cities they will be performing in. "That is very exciting, but I love doing the two man format as it brings the lyrics to the fore. Yoko really likes the way we treat the story in an abstract theatrical way."
Christmas brings a few days on South Coast near Nowra with his teenage children. "It won't be Dickensian, it'll just be a little quiet. I've never really subscribed to Christmas, I'm not part of any religious group and I find it horrendously commercial. But I understand to you can't wrench that away from the kids."
Waters says the biggest reaction he gets is at the beginning of the show. "It's not a happy Beatles concert, It starts with a series of gunshots which blow them out of their seats and a dark stage with a spotlight and me speaking in a Liverpool accent about the sunset.- They are thinking 'what is this?', but very quickly they start to get it.
"I love that, I think I have achieved what theatre is intended to do." The show is not chronological, but the random thoughts of Lennon. "I get them [the audience] travelling on this journey which they didn't expect to be on."
