Geoffrey Rush returned to the stage for a reading of The Merchant of Venice last month, one year since his lawyer Bruce McClintock, QC, told the Federal Court the actor might never work again.
Rush, of course, holds the record for the largest defamation win in the country after he was awarded $2.9 million earlier this year.
That was after The Daily Telegraph reported on his “inappropriate behaviour” towards actor Eryn Jean Norvill during a Sydney Theatre Company production of King Lear. (The tabloid is now appealing those damages.)
Actor Eryn Jean Norvill leaves the Supreme Court in April.Credit: AAP
But it's good to see Rush isn’t the only one to move on, professionally speaking. Norvill will play every role in the STC’s production of The Picture of Dorian Gray, a much-anticipated part of the outfit’s 2020 season.
Of some note: digging deep into the personal bank account to help get the Kip Williams-directed production off the ground are none other than the theatre’s chairman Ian Narev, the former Commonwealth Bank chief executive, and his wife Frances Allan.
Eryn Jean Norvill and Sydney Theatre Company chair Ian Narev. Illustration: John ShakespeareCredit:
It's Norvill's first on-stage role in Australia since the scandal.
The STC board didn’t (and presumably couldn’t) say much during the Rush trial. Could this be a case of Narev letting the money do the talking?
It’s not the first time Narev and Allan have personally supported a production.They teamed up with Gretel Packer to send The Secret River to Britain earlier this year, and with Qantas boss Alan Joyce and his new husband Shane Lloyd to put Lord Of The Flies on stage. Norvill, incidentally, had her first off-stage role since the allegations were raised in that production.
Next year they are joined by Rebel Penfold-Russell, the wine heiress who is backing Mary Stuart, Transfield Services rich-listers Luca and Anita Belgiorno-Nettis (No Pay? No Way!), and former Microsoft Australia boss Daniel Petre (patron of the final Wharf Revue).
SET IN STONE?
Another Macquarie Street sitting week brings with it yet another round of speculation about the possible departure of Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s chief-of-staff Sarah Cruickshank. While Berejiklian’s long-standing lieutenant has an interest in returning to the bureaucracy, the field of successors has narrowed.
David Bold, who joined Berejiklian’s office in June as her director of parliamentary business after a stint in Malcolm Turnbull's prime minister's suite, is calling it quits at the end of the month.
That leaves Neil Harley, Berejiklian’s strategy head and deputy chief-of-staff, lined up for the gig.
Speculation among staffers at 52 Martin Place — the ministerial headquarters — suggested Liberal state director Chris Stone could also be a possibility. He did not respond on Monday.
BRIEFLY NOTED
Elections for the Bar Association’s governing committee went ahead late last week without a hitch — or, really, anybody noticing at all.
Tim Game, SC, who was serving on the Bar Council when Stern Hu was arrested in China, remains its president, a position he has held for several years. Michael McHugh, SC, who has sat on the committee since before the Tampa affair (bar one year), was also re-elected.
It’s certainly some way off the torturous takeover — and subsequent defeat in 2014 — of a group of silks who wanted the right to once again be referred to as Queen's Counsels.
Anna Mitchelmore, SC, and Ruth Higgins, SC, the barrister currently representing former BlueScope executive Jason Ellis against the competition regulator, have also been returned.
LUNCH RUSH
It was this time last week that Visy chairman Anthony Pratt and Hancock Prospecting mogul Gina Rinehart were stealing the Melbourne Cup Birdcage show as they enjoyed a trackside power lunch.
Gina Rinehart at the Birdcage last Tuesday.Credit: Tash Sorensen
But the meal inside the painfully exclusive — emphasis on pain — Lexus marquee almost didn’t go ahead, according to CBD sources who say the nine-person Pratt posse received a rather tepid welcome inside the pavilion’s pop-up Neil Perry diner.
Pratt and Rinehart were left loitering "for a good five or 10 minutes” while organisers fretted over where to sit the nine-person group originally booked as a party of six.
They were joined by Pratt’s partner Claudine, sisters Heloise Pratt and Fiona Geminder, Noiseworks frontman Jon Stevens, businessman Raphael Geminder and Olympians Simon Keenan and Koti Ngawati. The indignity of being told the larger tables had been set aside for “Lexus clients” was amplified, we are told, by the fact that the dining room was empty.
The detente ended after a fed-up Pratt simply parked himself at a larger table and refused to budge.
And while the Lexus crew got the message, it was not before they managed to add some of their guests to the end of the billionaire-heavy table. Everyone was thrilled.