Lé Nør (The Rain) - Perth Festival
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Reviewed by Kate O'Sullivan
When The Last Great Hunt first premiered Lé Nør (The Rain) in 2019, it quickly developed a reputation as one of the company’s most inventive works. Now returning as part of Perth Festival, the show has been remounted for a much larger audience at Heath Ledger Theatre — and its conceptual ambition remains as thrilling as ever.
Lé Nør recreates a fictional foreign film live on stage, every night. What unfolds is a roller-coaster narrative that moves between simmering romance, zany comedy and pointed social commentary. It’s also consistently funny. The show revels in the excess of its 1980s romanticism aesthetic — from intense face makeup and towering hair to costumes that feel gleefully loud. The humour leans unapologetically camp, with visual gags and sharp one-liners landing throughout. Yet beneath all the silliness, the piece wears its heart proudly, building toward a final act that proves unexpectedly moving.
The production’s invented language, Sólset, could easily have been a barrier, but instead it becomes part of the show’s texture. Rather than distracting from the storytelling, it feels entirely natural within the strange cinematic world the performers create.
The real spectacle, though, lies in watching the film itself being constructed. Every shot is pulled together in full view of the audience. What appears on the large central screen is being created in real time beside it, behind it , around it, and sometimes directly in front of it. Cameras whip across the stage, pivoting quickly between performers and props as they capture the footage that immediately appears projected above. The mechanics of movie magic are laid bare, and seeing the choreography required to make it all work is half the delight.
Having previously been staged in more intimate venues such as PICA Performance Space and Studio Underground, the shift to the larger Heath Ledger Theatre does introduce some challenges. Much of the pleasure of Lé Nør comes from seeing how the illusion is assembled — the small tricks, the quick camera swaps, the ingenuity of the staging. From seats further back in the stalls or up in the circle, some of this detail is inevitably lost. The balance subtly shifts, and the experience becomes a little more film than theatre.
Even so, Lé Nør remains a wildly inventive piece of stagecraft. By inviting the audience to watch cinema being built from scratch each night, The Last Great Hunt deliver a work that is playful, technically impressive, and surprisingly heartfelt. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most magical part of theatre is seeing exactly how the magic happens.
Reviewer Note: Tickets for this review were provided by Perth Festival.
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