It’s a “friend of a friend story” of how I came to discover the Greek Theatre at Marrickville today. The friend of a friend was the lead (only) female actor in the play “Havana, Harlem” (part of the Sydney Fringe Festival).

The premise for the play is a behind-the-scenes fictionalised account of Fidel Castro’s 1960 address to the United Nations. Set in a hotel room, the events come from the perspective of Celia Sanchez who was in a relationship with Castro. Che Guevara was also in the room. And so to was Jose Molina, the waiter, who just happened to be a former partner of Sanchez. Although it sounds complex, it wasn’t really, and with some historical knowledge, the play was reasonably easy to follow. And I quite enjoyed it, though I’m assuming there was a fair bit of historical licence involved.

The theatre itself is a lovely little space (despite the occasional aircraft noise), located in the Addison Road community/arts precinct. It’s an area I haven’t explored before – with markets, and all sorts of things – but having had a brief taste, will be headed back there some time.

After the play we headed off to more friends of friends for an afternoon/evening watching old DVDs of the Eurovision Song Contest. A small group of people with different obsessions. One was a fan of Swedish band, The Ark (Eurovision 2007). Another loved the Latvian band, Brainstorm (2001), and was travelling to Europe in November to see them play. Another guy had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of Eurovision, which he attributed to listening to the entire Eurovision back-catalogue while playing “World Of Warcraft” during his VCE year. My special subject, of course, was the Swedish contribution to Eurovision in the last ten years. It was really great to meet some people who are just as freaky as me :)

And then on the way home, I called in for a drink at The Shift and ran into my friend, http://theotherandrew.blogspot.com/ which was nice.

A day of contrasts, you might say…