REVIEWS FROM THE ADELAIDE FRINGE 2010

REVIEWS FROM THE EDINBURGH FRINGE 2008

WINNER: FRINGEREVIEW.COM TEAPOT 2008
Something I have noticed in recent years at the Fringe is that productions that have any kind of life-affirming qualities or ultimately positive messages, tend to hit a glass ceiling of f'our-stars,' no matter how truly outstanding they are. It is in fashion to be slightly disapproving of life-affrimation as art.
Lynn Manning's one-man tour-de-force, "Weights" has achieved several four-star ratings at the Edinburgh Fringe 2008, and I believe it is time at least one reviewer who isn't afraid of applauding both positivity AND outstanding theatre and presenting this production with a well deserved five star rating to a play in which the "universal oneness of all things" is shared and made practically evident. This is a piece of theatre that isn't afraid to chart the darkest hours of a person's biography, yet equally to celebrate, and even offer up to an audience, a happier outcome, and a message that the lowest places we sometimes find ourselves in are the places from which the steps can only rise upward.
Lynn Manning, actor, writer, commentator on life, and occasional comedian of the stage, has a rich vibrant voice, which tells a tale so evocative and resonant, it received regular whoops, sighs and spontaneous rounds of applause from audience members. Manning shares his own personal story, creating the voices and gestures, so well observed, of over a dozen characters, in a journey that takes us through his childhood, the sixties, the seventies and toward the now.
The violent act that led to his blindness is re-charted and played out with superb pacing, observation, poetry and not a small amount of hindsight-humour. This is fine writing realised on the stage through direct story-acting. We find ourselves in L.A, on Hollywood's famous Vine Street. We stare down the barrel of a gun with Manning, and we stare with him down the tunnel of years that represents his past, present and a future without sight yet brimming with insight. I stopped taking notes after ten minutes, the reviewer's notebook and pen dropped, and I had to just watch and listen.
As a performer, his authenticity and directness is refreshing. This is a man on a "free ride to wasted", who takes us beyond the darker years and into a place where he is realising himself through the creative opportunity that blindness has brought him. Manning performs with an economy of movement, a large but graceful soul, his delivery is so on top of his material that it feels as if he is telling the story for the first time. The ability to do that confirms this as outstanding work.
A story of loss of sight, of growing up, and of learning to experience the inner light of creativity, so well described by writers such as Jacques Lusseryan, Manning has succeeded in bring a life-affirming story to the stage that never descends into sentimentality and firmly confronts the harsh realities of life. A story of loss of sight, perhaps; but Manning has helped the rest of us to see a little more clearly with this fabulous play. (Paul Levy - fringereview.com 10/08/08)

Doing my usual, ok where am I next, I frequently arrive at a venue knowing only the name of the production I am about to see and in this case that it is part of the Theatre Tours International & Guy Masterson Productions, the show 'Weights'. Not much of a clue in that, ok sit back and enjoy as you know you are about to witness a superb performance.
On stage we meet Lynn Manning a six-foot plus vision of a good-looking man with a superb physique, this Afro Caribbean gentleman proceeds to tell the story of his life but there is something about his face. At first I can't put my finger on what it is but as the show progresses I realise, through his performance it is true he is blind.
This autobiographical play only reaches from childhood to his mid 20's when he was shot in the face and slightly beyond to show his determination to become a writer. The admiration I have developed for this man is not through sympathy but my respect for what he has been through, the goals he has achieved and this performance itself. He concludes the show by reciting one of his own poems which is absolutely beautiful.
This cleverly written and excellently performed piece is an absolute must for fans of the one person show, those of quality theatre and anyone wanting to get excellent value for money. Lynn portrays the characters in his life extremely well. Robert Egan's directorial job would appear to have been a reasonably easy one.
My only regret is that I did not see 'Weights' during its Fringe debut in 2007! (Sheila Jack - one4review.com 08/08/08)

This is the second visit to Edinburgh for Lynn Manning's engrossing one-man show, which tells the story of his life from his disrupted Los Angeles childhood through to his being blinded in a bar-room shooting and his subsequent emergence as an independent poet, playwright and actor.
Last year, the show was based down at Theatre Workshop, but this year it will hopefully reach an even wider public at the Assembly Rooms. Manning cuts a striking figure from the off. A tall, muscular former world Blind Judo champion, he is dressed incongruously in an outfit that seems to belong more to a Florida beachwalk than the mean streets of LA.
His attitude, however, quickly brushes any confusion aside as he begins to lay out in stylish, absorbing detail the events of the day that changed his life for ever, a day (as he says) that was "tipped way too far into the positive not to go tumbling headlong into the negative." His story then winds back from the shooting to talk about his family. His mother had nine children by the time she was twenty-nine years of age. The kids had several different fathers, and the one that Manning talks of most, Bill, was sexually abusing at least two of Manning's younger siblings.
It's obviously a sad and harrowing state in which to live, but Manning tells it with not a trace of self-pity; on the contrary, his fluid, quasi-rap style glows with the lustre of his resilient optimism. This trait also brings him into conflict, post-shooting, with a trauma counsellor who simply won't believe that he has accepted his blindness within days rather than taking the three or four months that her textbooks say he should.
Lynn Manning is clearly a naturally gifted storyteller with a vivid and distinctive style. I found his description of how becoming blind transformed his world and allowed him to "see" what he'd been missing through "the distraction" of sight fascinating. I'm sure you will too. (Lorraine McCann - Edinburghguide.com 08/08/08)