The Story.
3 paragraphs from Brian Hoad's review.
Snippets from others.
Sky is loosely based on the Freddy Valentich story, of a young man disappearing in a light aircraft incident over Bass Straight, neither his body nor debris from the aircraft ever being found. He radioed about strange lights flying around him for 8 minutes before he disappeared.
This is a one-man show of the father’s journey through grief, collapse into insanity and finally acceptance of the loss of his son. It is a psychological study with UFO and spiritual overtones, a picture of the little man caught in the glare and prejudice of publicity, coming face to face with his inner ghosts and finally with the vastness and mystery of the cosmos.
Sky was written for Henri by John Misto and produced by the Ensemble Theatre. It played in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth in 1992-93.
Excerpts from by Brian Hoad
the Review of SKY
in The Bulletin, August 4, 1992
Misto has lightened an essentially tragic theme, dealing with death, by choosing a sunny central character, Rocco Bettoni, a cheerful migrant from Naples who, having established a happy family in Australia, is informed that his son, Freddie, a young pilot, has mysteriously vanished while seemingly having a close encounter with a UFO - much like the Valentich case of 1978.
Yet little green men are mere red herrings in Sky. What matters is the way that unsolved mystery drags Rocco into a terrible struggle with grief. Since there is no body, no wreckage, no explanation, his denials are extensive, imaginative and often funny. At length, anger begins to erupt, particularly against his God, while a sense of personal guilt about his son begins to haunt his head and claw at his heart in the form of a savage vulture. He slides into madness to escape and there starts his strange journey towards a new understanding and acceptance of life.'...
As for Szeps,
he turns Rocco into the, highlight of his long career. It is difficult to think of a more challenging monodrama than Sky, a two-hour marathon in which Szeps must not only capture Rocco's wildly swinging moods but also, with subtle shifts in accent and attitude keep slipping in and out of the roles of the many other characters involved - his wife and daughters, the media, the coronial inquiry, the bureaucratic obfuscators ... He brings it all off brilliantly.
SNIPPETS FROM OTHER REVIEWS
Henri Szeps can be funny....He can also be devastating as a man who has lost not only his son, but as a result, his whole life. This is a great performance in a most difficult and complex piece by an actor who knows exactly what he is doing, whose sense of timing, use of emotion and ability to switch moods in mid-air are simply wonderful.