Dreaming, Losing in the Great Outback

Sometimes, both combatants lose: the woman struggling to save the Australian Aborigines’ way of life, and the woman drawing these soulful people into the 20th century.

   In “Daisy in the Dreamtimeâ€� the Aborigines lose, too.

   But they were done for the day British explorer Captain Cook spied the “cliffyâ€� shore of eastern Australia in 1788. By the time Daisy Bates, an Irish woman seeking freedom, adventure and magic, sets up her tent in Australia’s outback more than a century later it was all over. She just did not know it.

   Daisy (Joanna Seaton), corseted and fierce, aims to protect these nomadic, spirit-filled people (and herself) from 20th-century intrusions.  

   Missionary Annie Lock (Laurie Ellington), also for her own reasons, wants these painted people to wear pants, read books, tell time, live indoors and take quinine to combat malaria.   

   The two women, tough, rigid, both right and both wrong, duke it out entertainingly, Daisy assisted by desert neighbor King Billy (Donald Sosin); Annie by her church and its power to feed people.

   While the two battle to save the Aborigines (one pressing choice, the other, tradition), big government and big business sweep the two aside and destroy the Aborigines in their own special way. And though the tale is devastating, the characters, the acting, the moody sound, the spirits and Gloria Miller’s fine direction make this staged reading of “Daisy in the Dreamtimeâ€� an adventure.

   Aglet is presenting another staged reading of Lynne Kaufman’s “Daisy in the Dreamtimeâ€� March 20, 7 p.m., at Berkshire Theater Festival’s Unicorn Theatre in Lenox, MA. Telephone 860-435-6928.

Latest News

Robert J. Pallone

NORFOLK — Robert J. Pallone, 69, of Perkins St. passed away April 12, 2024, at St. Vincent Medical Center. He was a loving, eccentric CPA. He was kind and compassionate. If you ever needed anything, Bob would be right there. He touched many lives and even saved one.

Bob was born Feb. 5, 1955 in Torrington, the son of the late Joesph and Elizabeth Pallone.

Keep ReadingShow less
The artistic life of Joelle Sander

"Flowers" by the late artist and writer Joelle Sander.

Cornwall Library

The Cornwall Library unveiled its latest art exhibition, “Live It Up!,” showcasing the work of the late West Cornwall resident Joelle Sander on Saturday, April 13. The twenty works on canvas on display were curated in partnership with the library with the help of her son, Jason Sander, from the collection of paintings she left behind to him. Clearly enamored with nature in all its seasons, Sander, who split time between her home in New York City and her country house in Litchfield County, took inspiration from the distinctive white bark trunks of the area’s many birch trees, the swirling snow of Connecticut’s wintery woods, and even the scenic view of the Audubon in Sharon. The sole painting to depict fauna is a melancholy near-abstract outline of a cow, rootless in a miasma haze of plum and Persian blue paint. Her most prominently displayed painting, “Flowers,” effectively builds up layers of paint so that her flurry of petals takes on a three-dimensional texture in their rough application, reminiscent of another Cornwall artist, Don Bracken.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Seder to savor in Sheffield

Rabbi Zach Fredman

Zivar Amrami

On April 23, Race Brook Lodge in Sheffield will host “Feast of Mystics,” a Passover Seder that promises to provide ecstasy for the senses.

“’The Feast of Mystics’ was a title we used for events back when I was running The New Shul,” said Rabbi Zach Fredman of his time at the independent creative community in the West Village in New York City.

Keep ReadingShow less