A SELECTION OF MEDIA QUOTES
Paul Jackson's lighting is miraculous: he doesn't so much design light as sculpt the darkness.
- Theatre Notes
The set and lighting design (Paul Jackson), with its profound shadows and beams of cold, unnatural light, is powerful and highly atmospheric …
- The Guardian
He opens in a dark void. "God said: 'Let there be light' and there was light" - though the text used here is, as elsewhere, is not exactly Biblical. This particular light was actually the work of Paul Jackson, and it is masterly: the naked bodies of Eve and Adam look like paintings by Michelangelo or Titian.
- Time Out Sydney
Paul Jackson’s lighting design is phenomenal.
- ArtsHub
The lighting design, by Paul Jackson, is consistently ingenious . . .
- Time Out London
Brilliant design transfigures the theatrical spectacle. Paul Jackson’s lighting can transform the rectangle centre stage into a fathomless abyss or a neon sea; it paints dramatic space with masterly precision and lends shadowy accentuation to the bodies hurtling through it.
- The Age
On its own, Paul Jackson’s almost palatial set of strong geometric planes, sculpted pillars and elliptical skylights could house any play from Sophocles to Pinter, or opera from Vivaldi to John Adams. His lighting of many sudden changes or unfolding shadows, too, is exceptional.
- Limelight
Lichtdesigner Paul Jackson verwandelt den 70minütigen Abend in ein Schattenreich des Halbdunkel. (Lighting designer Paul Jackson transforms the 70 minute evening into a shadow world of half darkness)
- DasKulturBlog Berlin
Paul Jackson’s minimalistic lighting design adds haunting dimensions, boxing the stage with ground-level lighting bars and shifting through eerie blue and bright white washes to transform the dancers into shadowy figures and stark silhouettes.
- The Australian
Paul Jackson’s lighting is ostentatious perfection.
- Herald Sun
Paul Jackson’s lighting design is, as with much of his work, an essay in shadows.
- The Guardian
Though the various scenic configurations remain similar throughout, Paul Jackson’s exquisite lighting ensures that each scene has its distinct aura: the overwhelmingly vibrant colors reflected from Solaris’ oceanic surface fill the stage with a vigor that borders on the sublime. Like the artist Dan Flavin’s fluorescent installations, these lights are at once ominous, tender, and electrifying.
- The Theatre Times, London
I spent much of the show admiring Jackson's lighting, which is no less than exquisite.
- Australian Book Review
Paul Jackson's lighting design is faultless, often wondrous.
- Limelight
Paul Jackson’s lighting plays subtly across it throughout, giving it now the feeling of crepuscular sunlight seen deep in the old masters, now the ethereal light found in an Australian Impressionist dawn.
- The Saturday Paper
… a production that teems with contrasts … and inhabits the outer reaches of experimental theatre … Samara Hersch is a bold talent to watch, and set and lighting designer, Paul Jackson, is an alchemist in his own right. From dais to mikveh to grave – the transformations wrought through that simple, but ingenious stage set are a triumph.
- Australian Jewish News
Paul Jackson is, I think, the real genius of this production. Some of his design work was magic … Winnie’s head, golden, suffused, detached above a dark tower of rubble, Forsyth’s archaic smile beaming into eternity …
- Neandellus
The lighting by Paul Jackson is flooded with moodiness and variation, often grey-gold, sometimes deep purple, a virtuoso palette.
- The Saturday Paper
.... while Paul Jackson's lush lighting creates dense and spectacular atmosphere, from a lurid pink love-mist to a submarine wonderland.
- The Age and SMH
The lighting design, by the immensely talented Paul Jackson, does as much with shadow and darkness as it does with light.
- Herald Sun
Marg Horwell and Paul Jackson’s set is both minimal and monumental: there are chairs strewn on and around a black revolving platform with a section of wall to suggest interior space, and the vast curtain that covers the whole of the back of the stage is used brilliantly in the transitions between the first and second scenes, and for the finale. Jackson’s lighting design harasses the actors with jittering flourescence and drenches the back curtain in red to match the jail clothing and finally confronts the spectators as well.
- Daily Review
The production itself takes place in a huge boxing ring which stretches the entire width of the Merlyn Theatre, its shadowy expanses exaggerated by Paul Jackson's lighting, which seems more an art of darkness visible than mere illumination.
- Theatre Notes
Jackson's use of burning candles and electric light is stunning and his light-only Golem evokes a fascinating contradiction of fear and love. I know I say it every time, but there isn't a lighting designer in this town who comes near to Jackson.
- Sometimes Melbourne
“I saw this on Sunday and thought it was one of the most accomplished pieces of theatre I have experienced .... I agree with you on the stage and the lighting. Honestly, Paul Jackson could light a fart and make it look amazing ...... Moving Target was very exciting theatre."
- Radio National
Anna Cordingley and Paul Jackson’s set and lighting design marries absolute minimalism of means with a thorough clarity of signification: it is a high achievement of a design sensibility particular to Australian theatre
- Guerilla Semiotics
Perhaps the biggest achievement is Paul Jackson's lighting. At one point the minimal light on Niedermair, as he splutters and crawls up the staircase, makes him look for all the world like a winged gargoyle . . . At another point, Niedermair is just a head, seemingly suspended in space.
- Daily Telegraph London
For a show centring on the play of light and shadow, lighting designer Paul Jackson must be commended. Plunged into darkness after only a few minutes on stage, the performance relies on a series of phosphoric flares created with found light sources: from torches and sparklers to bicycle-powered stage lights and surrendered mobile phones.
- Time Out Sydney
An imposing wall latticed with a cruciform and circular pattern, symbols of life’s primal struggle with death. And Paul Jackson’s lighting captures every phase of the sun – blazing noon; horizontal rays through dust and wet vapour; crepuscular, dappled shadows.
- The Age
Paul Jackson’s lighting is, as usual, imaginative, stylish and comprehensive.
- Melbourne Stage
The first few minutes of What If If Only – a scene in which not one word is spoken – is among the most exquisite theatre I’ve seen. It’s the creation of the stellar production team – Jackson’s lighting, Horwell’s set design, Woodward’s sound. The curtain rises to show Someone staring out of the back window, which looks over the garden we saw earlier in Escaped Alone, of an abstracted, open-walled suburban house. She is holding a boiled egg that she takes to the kitchen table, peels, salts and eats.
As Someone sits at the table, an essay in lighting – a kind of chronological sculpture – flickers around them: lamps turn on and off, headlights sweep past the house, rooms plunge into darkness and reanimate. We realise we are witnessing months of evenings just like this one. It’s a devastating portrait of loneliness that’s drawn from a single stage direction: “Someone on their own."
- The Saturday Paper
Paul Jackson's lighting is miraculous: he doesn't so much design light as sculpt the darkness.
- Theatre Notes
The set and lighting design (Paul Jackson), with its profound shadows and beams of cold, unnatural light, is powerful and highly atmospheric …
- The Guardian
He opens in a dark void. "God said: 'Let there be light' and there was light" - though the text used here is, as elsewhere, is not exactly Biblical. This particular light was actually the work of Paul Jackson, and it is masterly: the naked bodies of Eve and Adam look like paintings by Michelangelo or Titian.
- Time Out Sydney
Paul Jackson’s lighting design is phenomenal.
- ArtsHub
The lighting design, by Paul Jackson, is consistently ingenious . . .
- Time Out London
Brilliant design transfigures the theatrical spectacle. Paul Jackson’s lighting can transform the rectangle centre stage into a fathomless abyss or a neon sea; it paints dramatic space with masterly precision and lends shadowy accentuation to the bodies hurtling through it.
- The Age
On its own, Paul Jackson’s almost palatial set of strong geometric planes, sculpted pillars and elliptical skylights could house any play from Sophocles to Pinter, or opera from Vivaldi to John Adams. His lighting of many sudden changes or unfolding shadows, too, is exceptional.
- Limelight
Lichtdesigner Paul Jackson verwandelt den 70minütigen Abend in ein Schattenreich des Halbdunkel. (Lighting designer Paul Jackson transforms the 70 minute evening into a shadow world of half darkness)
- DasKulturBlog Berlin
Paul Jackson’s minimalistic lighting design adds haunting dimensions, boxing the stage with ground-level lighting bars and shifting through eerie blue and bright white washes to transform the dancers into shadowy figures and stark silhouettes.
- The Australian
Paul Jackson’s lighting is ostentatious perfection.
- Herald Sun
Paul Jackson’s lighting design is, as with much of his work, an essay in shadows.
- The Guardian
Though the various scenic configurations remain similar throughout, Paul Jackson’s exquisite lighting ensures that each scene has its distinct aura: the overwhelmingly vibrant colors reflected from Solaris’ oceanic surface fill the stage with a vigor that borders on the sublime. Like the artist Dan Flavin’s fluorescent installations, these lights are at once ominous, tender, and electrifying.
- The Theatre Times, London
I spent much of the show admiring Jackson's lighting, which is no less than exquisite.
- Australian Book Review
Paul Jackson's lighting design is faultless, often wondrous.
- Limelight
Paul Jackson’s lighting plays subtly across it throughout, giving it now the feeling of crepuscular sunlight seen deep in the old masters, now the ethereal light found in an Australian Impressionist dawn.
- The Saturday Paper
… a production that teems with contrasts … and inhabits the outer reaches of experimental theatre … Samara Hersch is a bold talent to watch, and set and lighting designer, Paul Jackson, is an alchemist in his own right. From dais to mikveh to grave – the transformations wrought through that simple, but ingenious stage set are a triumph.
- Australian Jewish News
Paul Jackson is, I think, the real genius of this production. Some of his design work was magic … Winnie’s head, golden, suffused, detached above a dark tower of rubble, Forsyth’s archaic smile beaming into eternity …
- Neandellus
The lighting by Paul Jackson is flooded with moodiness and variation, often grey-gold, sometimes deep purple, a virtuoso palette.
- The Saturday Paper
.... while Paul Jackson's lush lighting creates dense and spectacular atmosphere, from a lurid pink love-mist to a submarine wonderland.
- The Age and SMH
The lighting design, by the immensely talented Paul Jackson, does as much with shadow and darkness as it does with light.
- Herald Sun
Marg Horwell and Paul Jackson’s set is both minimal and monumental: there are chairs strewn on and around a black revolving platform with a section of wall to suggest interior space, and the vast curtain that covers the whole of the back of the stage is used brilliantly in the transitions between the first and second scenes, and for the finale. Jackson’s lighting design harasses the actors with jittering flourescence and drenches the back curtain in red to match the jail clothing and finally confronts the spectators as well.
- Daily Review
The production itself takes place in a huge boxing ring which stretches the entire width of the Merlyn Theatre, its shadowy expanses exaggerated by Paul Jackson's lighting, which seems more an art of darkness visible than mere illumination.
- Theatre Notes
Jackson's use of burning candles and electric light is stunning and his light-only Golem evokes a fascinating contradiction of fear and love. I know I say it every time, but there isn't a lighting designer in this town who comes near to Jackson.
- Sometimes Melbourne
“I saw this on Sunday and thought it was one of the most accomplished pieces of theatre I have experienced .... I agree with you on the stage and the lighting. Honestly, Paul Jackson could light a fart and make it look amazing ...... Moving Target was very exciting theatre."
- Radio National
Anna Cordingley and Paul Jackson’s set and lighting design marries absolute minimalism of means with a thorough clarity of signification: it is a high achievement of a design sensibility particular to Australian theatre
- Guerilla Semiotics
Perhaps the biggest achievement is Paul Jackson's lighting. At one point the minimal light on Niedermair, as he splutters and crawls up the staircase, makes him look for all the world like a winged gargoyle . . . At another point, Niedermair is just a head, seemingly suspended in space.
- Daily Telegraph London
For a show centring on the play of light and shadow, lighting designer Paul Jackson must be commended. Plunged into darkness after only a few minutes on stage, the performance relies on a series of phosphoric flares created with found light sources: from torches and sparklers to bicycle-powered stage lights and surrendered mobile phones.
- Time Out Sydney
An imposing wall latticed with a cruciform and circular pattern, symbols of life’s primal struggle with death. And Paul Jackson’s lighting captures every phase of the sun – blazing noon; horizontal rays through dust and wet vapour; crepuscular, dappled shadows.
- The Age
Paul Jackson’s lighting is, as usual, imaginative, stylish and comprehensive.
- Melbourne Stage
The first few minutes of What If If Only – a scene in which not one word is spoken – is among the most exquisite theatre I’ve seen. It’s the creation of the stellar production team – Jackson’s lighting, Horwell’s set design, Woodward’s sound. The curtain rises to show Someone staring out of the back window, which looks over the garden we saw earlier in Escaped Alone, of an abstracted, open-walled suburban house. She is holding a boiled egg that she takes to the kitchen table, peels, salts and eats.
As Someone sits at the table, an essay in lighting – a kind of chronological sculpture – flickers around them: lamps turn on and off, headlights sweep past the house, rooms plunge into darkness and reanimate. We realise we are witnessing months of evenings just like this one. It’s a devastating portrait of loneliness that’s drawn from a single stage direction: “Someone on their own."
- The Saturday Paper