With his easy laugh and infectious enthusiasm, it was such a pleasure to chat with renowned playwright, Justin Fleming, on the phone from Brisbane.  He will be in Sydney soon for the opening of his new play DRESDEN, another production with long-time collaborator Suzanne Millar. Fleming and Millar have collaborated on six productions but this will be the first at KXT Bakehouse.

1838: Richard Wagner writes Rienzi. Seventy years later, a 17-year-old Adolf Hitler witnesses the composer’s extraordinary first opera in performance - and is struck dumb. For Wagner, it was one of the greatest creative acts known to us.

For Hitler, it set in motion the greatest wave of human destruction we have ever seen. For both, the city of Dresden is their stage.

Justin Fleming’s explosive new play puts passion and power under the microscope through the lens of history and our own horrifying hindsight.

I began by sharing something in common .,.

SAG: Let me begin by saying that we share a birthday.  3rd Jan…  you me Tolkien and Mel Gibson!  I think with your considerable body of work you have a Capricorn’s single mindedness?

Fleming: My wife would tell you yes.  She says I’m a goat that’s going to get up that mountain!  Nothing is going to stop me!

SAG: And you are currently in Brisbane with the Merry Widow?

Fleming: Yes, it’s beautiful today, it’s about 23 degrees, the sun is shining.  It’s really lovely.  Yes OA wanted a new English libretto, you know a bit more spicy and all that so we have been everywhere because it not just Opera Australia but all the State companies as well.  For a hundred years there’s such rubbish been sung in English, you know it was all so syrupy and romantic but it’s really much more edgy than that.  Oh yeah you go back to the original its really quite sparkly so I tried to restore that.

SAG: I think we can call that a big show with a narrow focus but Dresden is exactly the opposite?

Fleming: (Laughs) Yes that’s exactly right.

SAG: Was it an idea of longstanding ?  And has the shape changed as you conceived it?

Fleming: I think it was about Wagner’s anniversary (2013) so yes, it’s been around for a lot of years.  I mentioned it to Suzanne , we were doing another play at the time, and she took very much to the idea.   So once she and her husband John got their own theatre at Kings Cross (KXT Bakehouse) we went back to it.

Then, of course, we needed two exceptional actors to play the roles of these two people.  Adolf Hitler starting as teenager and a young Wagner.

SAG: So Hitler and Wagner are intertwined in DRESDEN.

Fleming: What interested me right from the start is how a source, in this case Rienzi, the Roman leader who whipped up the crowd to save Rome and ended up in burning flames … which is exactly what happened to Hitler … what fascinated me was how one man could find in this source great inspiration for creativity and in the other it brought about an extraordinary act of destruction.

SAG: So is that the key to DRESDEN?

Fleming: I think that is the key, yes.  That the same source material … that one was driven with the passion of creation and the other with destruction.

SAG: It’s about dark days with themes that defy twisting into redemption.  Will the production under the hand of Suzanne Miller take a realistic focus or is there any Slaughterhouse 5 in there?

Fleming: Look there is a realism focus, except this I would say, Wagner was focussing on the stage of the theatre and Adolf was focussing on the stage of the world but both of them are in performance … both of them are building a performance and it’s just the dimensions of it ….  One really is what we might call demonic and the other was far more godly.

SAG: It’s a pretty amazing cast that’s been assembled?   The show stars Yalin Ozucelik (fresh from Belvoir’s Sami in Paradise) as Adolf, Jeremy Waters (The Flick) as Richard, and Renee Lim (the hit TV series Pulse) as Cosima Wagner. Also Tom Campbell, Dorje Swallow, and Ben Wood.

An editor’s note here, that in answer to this question, the gracious Justin shared a whole lot of spoilers with me which I am not sharing.  But which make me more desperate to see the show.

SAG: I’m always interested in how writers feel when their show goes into that rehearsal room.

Fleming:  (More laughter) Well I think it’s a bit like that first day when the child goes to school … oh someone else is in control of my baby.  You do start to lose direct control of it, but that’s how it should be.  The writing of it is a very solo experience and yet bringing it to life is a crowd, ensemble, teamwork so you do have to surrender the work.  You have to ‘clutch’ yourself from it and let it breathe.  They are the ones who really put flesh on it.

SAG: I can hear that you have a lot of trust in your creative team there.

Fleming: Well. I’ve worked with Suzanne and John for some ten years now and I have never been disappointed. I am always thrilled with what they come up with.  Suzanne has a fantastic energy and she has great creative fire in the rehearsal room. You know, energy and ideas bounce off her and it’s so infectious that the actors grab it and run with it.  But of course, she’s so democratic as well that they can come back with their own contributions. And both combine for one united, powerful effect.

SAG: Can you talk to us a little about the sound design for this show.  It’s going to be important I think?

Fleming: Yes.  Max Lambert is designing.  I have worked with him a lot, he’s a real maestro.  And without being silly about it, I would say that the music is another character in the play.  It’s all recorded from the score of RIENZI, but arranged for Drama.  It’s not just between scenes but it underscores … here and there, like a movie.  So there’s this voice of RIENZI, of the work itself  … the voice of that work is underneath the production as well… fused with the production.

SAG: I am looking forward to seeing the show but a little wary of the subject matter, what do you think myself and other audiences will take away from the production.

Fleming: I think … ah.. what one really has too .. what I hope one will take away from it is … how dangerous it is when there is passion without love.  See I think, with Wagner it’s passion and love and with Adolf, one of the characters in the plays says it to him, you don’t have love.  If Adolf had love, he would not have gone the way he went.  A lot of leaders … he trails off.

DRESDEN from Bakehouse Theatre Company [Facebook] will play at KXT Theatre [Facebook] June 15th – 30th.