The world of Bacon

Three Furies: Scenes From the Life of Francis Bacon, has won wide acclaim in Australia.

As the critic Robert Hughes said, some art is wallpaper but the work of British painter Francis Bacon is flypaper. Claims stick to it, praise and condemnation are attracted in equal measure.

Bacon (1909-92) was a muscular, uncompromising painter whose screaming popes and businessmen are raw nerve-endings, emblems of the horrors of life and yet utterly compelling.

"I think he was an extremist in his life," says Australian playwright and film-maker Stephen Sewell. "He wanted to be at that place where the world was coming at him like a bullet through the eye. He lived it too. He didn't paint horrible pictures then go home to potter in the garden."

Sewell's play, Three Furies: Scenes From the Life of Francis Bacon, has already won wide acclaim in his homeland ('a startlingly inventive, austere vaudeville and drama', said the Sydney Morning Herald) and is dark cabaret about Bacon's uncompromising life and philosophies.

Yet with songs by Basil Hogios and direction by Jim Sharman (who also directed the Rocky Horror film, and stage productions of Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar), Three Furies is an emotionally engaging 90 minutes of theatre that explores Bacon's existential nature but also uses ancient story-telling forms and a sense of domestic drama.

"The whole point of my theatre," says Sewell, "is it is available to a wide audience. The dominant theatrical form at the moment is a kind of television realism where people have a cup of tea and a good long talk. I find that boring and dishonest to life as I know it. I want to re-embrace the stage that the Elizabethans occupied, to have a stage which is an entire world occupied by half a dozen people."

The genesis of the Bacon play began with an earlier work, The Secret Death of Salvador Dali, in which Sewell wanted the audience to have a dramatic experience which was surrealistic.

"Here I wanted to give the audience the experience of the mind of Bacon so I used similar techniques to the Dali, although the characters are very different.

"Dali's spirit was like a child's, and like a child he could be cruel and selfish but he also had the child's energy and curiosity. But Bacon is a man, and the world I initially created was a dark, heavy world, which I thought people would find difficult to deal with.

"When Jim Sharman came on board he loved the work of Bacon and saw in the script some very exciting elements. He suggested we put some songs in and as soon as he said that I realised that was the extra bit that was needed to make it easier to follow, and as a structural element to lift the play into the realm I wanted it to be in.

"The thing that is often said about Bacon's work is that it is confronting, existential, that it's the emotional world that followed TS Eliot's The Wasteland and the horrors of the two world wars.

"But when people see the play they see there is also longing, and the longing for love, in Bacon's work. That is clear through the songs."

Sewell was drawn to Bacon as a kindred soul. "I'm known as a challenging writer prepared to go into the dark places so there was a philosophical affinity. The world he saw and experienced is one with which I had some sympathy, and his world of violence and horror was something I am familiar with. So the work spoke to me as it speaks to many people.

"As I got closer to him through the play I realised there were fascinating things about him as a man and how he lived his life, they had to do with being a person who lived his philosophy.

"I find his life and work bracing and inspiring, there is no sentiment left in his work. The images are shocking and he embraced our ape-like nature and didn't sentimentalise us as different from other creatures.

"The way I see my art, and where I see it having power like Bacon's, is in my role as a truth teller. Everyone can see or speak the truth, but it is a special responsibility of artists to do that if we can. Bacon always spoke and lived the truth." 

* What: Three Furies: Scenes From the Life of Francis Bacon

* Who: By Stephen Sewell. Score by Basil Hogios. Directed by Jim Sharman. Produced by Performing Lines. Starring Simon Burke, Socratis Otto, Paula Arundell

* When: Wednesday, March 2, 7.30pm

Thursday, March 3, 7.30pm

Friday, March 4, 6pm and 9pm

Saturday, March 5, 6pm and 9pm

* Where: SkyCity Theatre