In 1992, John Waters and Stewart D’Arrietta took to the small stage at the Tilbury Hotel, Woolloomooloo, Sydney with their debut production of “Looking Through A Glass Onion”. What was an initially a one week booking quickly sold out and extended into a six week, sell out season. Thus the original seed of “Looking Through A Glass Onion” was planted.

Fast forward 20 years and this groundbreaking production is being revived and will tour Australia for one final time before heading to the US. After many successful and sold out “Looking Through A Glass Onion” tours, John and Stewart have decided to return to their ‘up close and personal’ intimate Two Man show and will be bringing it to capital cities around Australia in April and May 2012.

“Although we’ve done two tours with the full band we decided to go back out of the road with theoriginal Two Man show. It began its life as a small venue piece with just Stewart D’Arrietta and myself on stage at the Tilbury Hotel in Sydney. I made my entrance from a kitchen and climbed over patron’s laps to scramble onto a tiny raised platform in the corner of the room. The audience and I were inescapably intimate with each other from the very start, and I kinda like that. Not every venue we play this time around can be exactly like that, but it’s the feeling I want to create – to take the show back to its roots” says John Waters.

The national tour of “Looking Through A Glass Onion” commenced in November 2010 at the Sydney Opera House with a sell out two week season. The production quickly extended throughout 2011 taking in over 40,000 ticket sales nationally to be one of the longest running Australian tours of recent times and is second only to ColdChisel as the highest selling Australian Artist tour.

This is a last chanceopportunity for Australia to see this show for quite some time as discussions are underway to take the show to the US, Asia and New Zealand.

“The response to the show has been fantastic, especially from the younger audiences that are coming along, some of whom were not even born when Lennon and The Beatles were recording and releasing their music, it’s a testament to the legacy of the man and his music that still excites and intrigues people to this day” says Waters.

The show is not a cut-and-paste biography of Lennon or an emulation of the original recordings. On stage, with shadows from the lighting arrangement fluttering over his face, John Waters explores theessence of the man through song and spoken word. Waters becomes synonymous with Lennon. He shies away from imitating the artist, but so emotive is his performance, it lulls the audience into believing anything is possible. It’s part concert and part biography, though it doesn’t seek to tell the full story of Lennon’s life.

“Rather than to impersonate, I wanted to evoke his honesty, bitter-sweet humour, self criticism and disdain for pretentiousness and pomposity”, says Waters.

“The song Glass Onion was John Lennon’s postscript to The Beatles. It had such a strong image of crystal ball-gazing and peeling away the layers that it inspired the format for this show – a kaleidoscope collage of song, word, emotion and image”, agrees D’Arrietta with Waters.

For the audience this is either an emotional trip down memory lane or a wonderful introduction to the life and times of one of the most fascinating icons of our time.

The show features all your favourite songs and more, a total of 31 songs are performed including,‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds’, ‘Woman’, ‘Jealous Guy’, and ‘Imagine’, this is a show for all ages.

When not performing Looking Through A Glass Onion shows…John Waters can be found on the set of Offspring, which is busy filming the third series for Network Ten to air in the coming months.

“It’s clear that Looking Through A Glass Onion has stood the test of time and can be called now a classic piece of Australian repertoire”. SYDNEY GIG GUIDE DEC 10, 2011 **** 4 stars

” a remarkable celebration of a unique talent… Waters does it brilliantly” THE SPECTATOR, LONDON

“John Waters encapsulates the essence of Lennon.” CAPITOL RADIO, LONDON

“The humour, the pace, the crisp intercuts of light and sound, the emotional texture of music and narrative, and the insights add up to a stirring celebration of genius.” SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

“Part bio, part great concert, totally excellent.” THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, SYDNEY

Tour dates: www.johnwaters.com.au