Review: Queensland Theater Company’s The Pitch

The Queensland Theater Company has opened its 2013 season with a bang. Wait. Make that a double bang. Two one act plays (The Pitch and The China Incident) that showcased the best there is in Australian writing, direction and well.. acting.

Both plays are written by Peter Houghton but have separate directors. The Pitch has Hugh Parker playing a down on luck screenwriter about to pitch to Hollywood biggies, while The China Incident has Barbara Lowing trying to keep communication lines between the big power players from breaking down. The Pitch starts the evening off and after a 20 minute break, The China Incident plays.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we were unable to stay for The China Incident so this review basically covers The Pitch.

The Pitch works like a satire on the modern Hollywood movies and the way they end. Hugh Parker plays Walter Weinermann, a screenwriter who was unlucky in love, to talk himself up about a “pitch” he is about to give to a couple of Hollywood biggies for a script that he has been working on for some time but he is yet to finish. With only a couple of hours to go till the big meeting, he has to psych himself up to come up with plots and characters to fill the holes in the story. He draws inspiration from his own (love) life and tries to make a mish-mash of what a Hollywood script should look like. So you have cameos from Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, Sean Connery, Chris Tucker, Catherine Zeta Jones and the crowd (and personal) favorite Rupert Everett.

With a one man show, this is hard to achieve and Hugh Parker does a remarkable job of capturing the mannerisms and the styles of each of these actors (except Catherine Zeta Jones) as he goes through his script playing out the scenes and the part the actors play in it. To not only remember the lines, but to capture the essence of an actor so that the audience can instantly identify the characterization is a stupendous feat. Hugh Parker as the actor, Catarina Hebbard as the director and Melissa Agnew as the dialect coach all deserve a standing ovation for this.

CraftGossip.com received complimentary tickets to see the show.

What? The Pitch and The China Incident (two one person plays separated by a 20 minute interval)

Where? Cremorne Theater, QPAC, SouthBank, Brisbane.

When? 2nd Feb-9th March 2013.

Tickets: QPAC

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If you’ve been around here long, you know that I’m in a perpetual battle with my stash. I feel like I haven’t bought yarn in years unless I needed it for a specific project. I knit fairly a lot, and crochet some, too, but it feels like my stash never gets any smaller.

It’s not just the unused balls of yarn that are a problem. In fact, maybe a bigger issue is all the odd balls and leftover bits that seem to pile up without any effort. Even though I love scrappy projects (and knit a whole sweater dress with scraps earlier this year) it still feels like a never-ending quest to use up all the little bits.

So I’m always on the lookout for good patterns that are made to use of the extra bits of yarn. If they are super easy, too, that’s so much the better.

So it is with the Lalu Scarf by Sheena Stone. This any yarn, any gauge pattern is designed to use up whatever scraps you have on hand (assuming they’re mostly the same weight or can be held double to make the same weight).

It’s a tube scarf worked in the round, and she specifically notes that she works it outside in, so the back of the scarf is on the outside as you knit. The needle tips are on the part of the circle farthest away from you as you knit.

It also has an attached I-cord edging, which sounds really time consuming but does give the edges a nice, finished look.

The way the colors are changed as you knit you don’t really need a lot of each color. It would probably be good if you had at least enough of a color to complete one round, but you can change colors more often than every round if you need to because you’re using all your tiny bits.

Grab the free pattern on Ravelry.

[Photo: Sheena Stone.]

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