What's On

Diamond

The Q, Queanbeyan

There are artists who make work, and there are artists who build communities. Liz Lea has spent more than three decades doing both.

That generosity sits at the heart of Diamond. Blending contemporary dance, spoken word, cabaret, music and projection, the work reflects on ageing, identity, resilience and what it means to inhabit a body that is consistently changing. It is deeply personal, frequently funny and, at its best, quietly profound.

Lea is an engaging storyteller. She speaks candidly about the concussion that changed her life and with refreshing frankness about women's health. One of the evening's most memorable moments comes as she gently dismantles one of the biggest misconceptions around menopause. Menopause, she explains, is not the years of hormonal upheaval women endure. It is one day—the point at which twelve months have passed since a woman's final period. Everything leading up to it is perimenopause. And everything afterwards is post menopause.

It is astonishing how many people don't know that.

The statistics she includes are equally sobering. Despite menopause affecting every woman who lives long enough to experience it, research into women's health remains astonishingly underfunded. Lea points out that more research has historically gone into penile dysfunction—a condition affecting around sixteen percent of men—than menopause. Oh, and to Harry Potter research among others – far out man!

Presented without bitterness or grandstanding, these moments land not as political rhetoric but as overdue public education. The audible gasps in the audience are evidence of Lea’s perfect timing as she allows these nuggets to land.

The show is full of moments like this: personal stories that become collective ones.

But where Diamond truly comes alive is in her dancing.

Liz Lea is a mesmerising performer. Her movement has evolved over the years without losing any of its precision or expressive clarity. The show opens with her long, articulate arms as they carve through space while the smallest shifts of weight communicate what whole paragraphs sometimes cannot. She carries herself with the confidence of someone who no longer needs to prove anything.

The lighting is exquisite throughout, and the projections create a rich visual landscape without overwhelming the choreography. There are images that linger long after the performance has finished.

The evening is also genuinely funny. Not every comic sequence landed for me—at times the humour edged a little too close to stand-up—but Lea's warmth is irresistible. She has the rare ability to make an audience feel as though they are sitting beside her rather than watching her. She aptly describes the night as a date with the audience.

And yet I left wanting less.

Not because any of the production's many elements failed, but because every time the work stripped itself back and simply allowed Liz Lea to occupy the stage, it reached another level.

Community dancers, projections and recorded material all speak to the extraordinary career Lea has built and the many lives she has touched. Their presence is understandable. But gradually I found myself wondering whether the production fully trusted its own centre.

Ironically, one of Diamond's recurring themes is enoughness: encouraging women to recognise their value beyond youth, productivity and perfection.

Again and again, the work asks us to reconsider where worth resides.

Yet the performance is at its most powerful whenever it quietly steps aside and lets Liz Lea answer that question herself.

Every solo was a highlight.

Every direct commentary drew me further in.

The more the production trusted her, the stronger it became.

The final solo is extraordinary.

Against beautiful projected imagery, Lea dances alone. There is a profound feeling of aloneness. After an evening reflecting on ageing, illness, resilience and joy, nothing more needs to be explained. Her body says it.

I found myself holding my breath as Lea seemed to become the very essence of her own breath and pain. Beautiful.

For me, the work had arrived exactly where it needed to.

Then the curtain call brought the full ensemble back onto the stage in a choreographed spectacular.

For me, the work had already finished.

After spending the evening watching Liz Lea prove she could hold a theatre entirely on her own, I simply wanted to applaud her.

Work like this rarely comes to our stages. Don’t miss the brief opportunity to see a true diamond of Australian theatre.