By Mikayla van Loon
The Lilydale Theatre Company has a history of performing poignant and relatable shows but the one-woman musical coming this November presents one that will pull on the heartstrings.
Moving On, a play written by Melburnian Cenarth Fox, explores the emotional spectrum of a woman cleaning and clearing out her mother’s house after her death.
A last minute inclusion in the Lilydale Athenaeum Theatre’s program for 2022, Moving On features seven songs and close to an hour and a half of performing without a break.
Starring the well-versed Angela Glennie and directed by Alan Burrows, the pair said it has been a joy to bring this show to life in the few short weeks they’ve had to rehearse so far.
“I really enjoy working with Angela. We’ve been working together for 26 years so we have a way of doing things,” Burrows said.
“I do enjoy, particularly working on this one where, with just one person, you can go through it virtually line by line.”
Glennie said working one-on-one with her director means every word, every phrase and every movement can be workshopped to create the best performance of her character possible.
This will be the first time Moving On has been performed in Melbourne for 19 years.
It was Burrows and his wife Christine who worked with Fox on the original playwriting, seeing Christine perform the role at a theatre in Clayton, before it was picked up by other theatres around Melbourne in the same year.
“When this hiatus happened with the theatre, I had to think quickly as to what we could do and I knew as long as Ange said yes, we could make it happen,” Burrows said.
Singing, dancing and acting for the full show, Burrows and Glennie said “it goes the full range of emotions.”
“There’s lots of fun in it and there’s also a couple of poignant and sad moments as well. So over that time of an hour and 25 minutes you go the full range of emotions. You laugh and hopefully you’ll cry,” Burrows said.
“And definitely, a lot of it will resonate with people…talk about art imitating life,” Glennie added.
For Glennie, the play has somewhat of a personal element to it – saying “I’m not sure which is therapy for what”.
“So there’s a woman, Maggie, living in Melbourne, who is my age, whose mother has passed and she’s facing the world’s hardest task and that is going through her mother’s possessions and she has a fairly annoying baby brother who you never meet but he rings and is a bit of a pest and he’s no help at all,” she said.
“At the moment when I’m not rehearsing, I’m currently cleaning out my mum’s house. I, however, have a brother to help me. It’s almost lightened it all. It’s not a morbid show.
“It is happy and it will make you reflect on your own happy memories, family memories.”
The parallel life that Glennie has been living while rehearsing has made her ability to step into the character much easier.
“Obviously the dialogue makes a lot of sense and even the spaces in between the dialogue, the silence, you can really understand what she may be thinking or feeling at that point,” she said.
“Going through that, in my own life, makes this job easier but equally, doing the reverse, it also helps to lighten up that task as well and make sense of it a little bit more.”
Burrows said “good writing is all about light and shade”, something Fox has done brilliantly to ensure there are moments of sorrow and moments of sheer relatability.
Although a late inclusion for season four, Burrows and Glennie said they hope people will be able to find comfort in the story being told.
“I think the audience, they’ll enjoy the music. They’ll enjoy the memories that it creates. They’ll enjoy the humour and they’ll appreciate that there’s no language of consequence. It doesn’t offend anyone.”
The Moving On season will run from 10 to 26 November, with matinees on Sunday 13 and 20, as well as Saturday 26.
To find out more or to book tickets, go to www.lilydaleatc.com
