Tauranga Art Gallery - Toi Tauranga

DOUBLE PORTRAIT Finding Frances Hodgkins - 7:00pm Fri 23 Jul 2010

Written by Jan Bolwell
Directed by Ralph McAllister

Jan Bolwell's critically acclaimed play on the intensely colourful life of New Zealand's most significant expatriate modernist painter of the 20th century, Frances Hodgkins.

Drama and excitement unfold when a stash of Frances Hodgkins paintings ends up in the hands of a Parisian gallery owner who has never heard of the artist. A female Auckland art gallery curator is determined to get them back to New Zealand. She dashes over to France, and uses all her feminine wiles and cunning to extract them from the Frenchman.

So begins Jan Bolwell’s lively, amusing, witty and critically acclaimed play about New Zealand’s most significant expatriate modernist painter of the 20^th century, Frances Hodgkins.

As the play progresses, Frances is seen in a series of different relationships, all of which deeply influence her life and work. She locks horns with her parents who do not understand her need to go to Europe; she is initially hostile to an English art dealer who wants to promote and sell her work, but he subsequently becomes a true friend; she establishes a loving relationship with her great friend and fellow New Zealand painter, Dorothy Richmond, and she is rescued from extreme poverty in London by an English friend and one of her students, Jane Ritchie.

Music and dance also run through the play and enliven the action and provide a sense of period in the different chapters of Hodgkin’s life. Jan Bolwell plays Frances Hodgkins, and she is supported by John Wraight and Perry Piercy, two highly experienced Wellington actors who play multiple roles. The play is directed by veteran Wellington director, Ralph McAllister.

Double Portrait: Finding Frances Hodgkins is designed to be presented in art galleries, and the play has been in great demand throughout New Zealand.

Since opening in May 2009, it has played at the Mahara Art Gallery, Waikanae, the New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Wellington, and the Christchurch and Dunedin Public Art Galleries. During the rest of the year it will be seen at the Tauranga Art Gallery, the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui and at the Going West literary festival in Auckland.

Supported by the FAME Trust and with the assistance of the Creative Communities Scheme   

Reviews

“This is an excellent production of a significant work by a strong New Zealand playwright.”
Mark Amery, visual arts critic, Dominion Post

“Like a painting emerging on the canvas as the artist’s brush strokes cast their spell, the play reveals itself as a rich and humorous blend of human drama, historical documentary and social satire.”
John Smythe, theatre critic, Theatreview

“Double Portrait: Finding Frances Hodgkins is a triumph. The play deftly echoes the structure of the paintings as scenes slide and merge different times and changing situations, not necessarily in the order they happened, but rather as they illuminate and reveal the life of this fabulous artist.
Renee, playwright and fiction writer

“The play uses “flash-backs’ and “flash-forwards’ throughout, always coherently, often opening out with music or dance to underline emotional states. All three actors clearly relish embodying the discoveries made by Hodgkin’s as an artist and a person in this dramatic journey, as did the intent audience, which was made clear by their responses during the play and during the question-and answer session with the actors and director, which followed.
Wickham Pack, theatre critic, actor