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By David Williamson
William Shakespeare has a lot to answer for! So, for that matter, does Dr Swain, a lecturer at NewWest University…
Grant Swain, a young lion of the post-structuralist movement at one of our newer universities argues that works revered as our literary heritage are nothing more than a collection of texts produced by an oppressive patriarchal society – and mostly written by Dead White (European) Males at that.
But Dr Swain didn't bank on the Bard or his impressionable student, Angela Judd. Shakespeare seems to understand so much about human nature. Can Angela choose between her two idols who are so at odds with one another? Williamson's new comedy puts Australia's contemporary society under the microscope, asking questions about academic rhetoric – and how reinvented men conduct their sex lives.
Australia's most popular contemporary playwright, David Williamson's recent work includes Emerald City (1986), Money and Friends (1992) and Brilliant Lies (1993).
Cast: Maggie Blinco, Kelly Butler, Simon Chilvers, Patrick Dickson, Michelle Doake, Glenn Hazeldine, John Howard, Babs McMillan, Barbara Stephens, Henri Szeps, Anna Volska
Direction: Wayne Harrison
Assistant Director: Marion Potts
Design: John Senczuk
(courtesy of Faculty of Creative Arts, Wollongong University)
Lighting Design: Nick Schlieper
Composer: Tony David Cray
Choreographer: Tony Bartuccio
World Premiere production by Sydney Theatre Company
Previews: 1 – 3 June (3 June only 4pm)
Opening Night: 3 June
Closes: 8 July
Venue: Playhouse
Aftershocks
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By Paul Brown and the Workers' Cultural Action Committee
'…told with a wry sense of humour that makes you laugh, or a totally unblinkered honesty that makes you cry…'
Brian Hoad, The Bulletin
At 10.30am on Thursday 28 December 1989, Newcastle was hit by an earthquake. Aftershocks is an eyewitness account of a natural disaster and a detailed verbatim study of how humans react in crisis – confronting death with camaraderie, courage and humour.
Newcastle resident Bob Phillips started taping interviews with the survivors as early as January 1990. Paul Brown and the Workers' Cultural Action Committee from Newcastle Trades Hall Council took on the project and with the addition of eight local researchers, they culled the mountain of oral material and structured it into dramatic form. There was no tampering with the original statements, just straightforward person-to-person storytelling.
'New Australian plays approached with imaginative attack and with hardly a word out of place are a rare thing in our theatre.' The Australian
Direction: Bruce Myles
Design : Dale Ferguson
Lighting Designer: Jamieson Lewis
Venue: Fairfax
Dates: July 20 to August 19
Robyn Nevin makes a welcome return to the MTC stage with Melbourne's newest leading lady, Frances O'Connor as Lady Windermere…
Little does young Lady Windermere realise that the fan given to her by her husband for her coming of age will help determine her future happiness.
She suspects her husband of infidelity with the infamous Mrs Erlynne but at the same time she has her own loyalties tested by the amorous attentions of the urbane Lord Darlington. Against her wishes, her husband, Lord Windermere, invites Mrs Erlynne to his wife's birthday ball. Mrs Erlynne arrives. Who is she? What is the secret of her past? Lady Windermere's Fan features those famous Wildean epigrams such as 'gossip is charming, but scandal is gossip made tedious with morality'. But the play has unexpected depth. A poignant and delicate emotional drama is played out while the wit of Oscar Wilde abounds in the stylish London salons of the late nineteenth century.
Cast includes: Robyn Nevin, Frances O'Connor, Humphrey Bower
Direction: Roger Hodgman
Design: Tony Tripp
Lighting Design: Jamieson Lewis
Previews: 5 – 8 August
Opening Night: 9 August
Closes: 9 September
Venue: Playhouse
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Ruth Cracknell and Pamela Rabe back together after their acclaimed performances in Lost in Yonkers…
Three Tall Women is Edward Albee's masterful play on coming to grips with the passage of time.We meet three women. The eldest, wealthy but ailing and cantankerous, is at 92 close to death; her memories are strong, but her body is constantly humiliating her. She is being nursed, respectfully but with resentment, by a middle-aged companion, and a 26 year old lawyer's representative has come to discuss the older woman's finances.
In the second act, the old woman is closer to death. The three women have become one, in quirky triplicate; her young, middle-aged and old selves, creating a more complex and reflective biography of the woman, particularly involving her horny relationship with her son. Albee has equalled his towering hits, The Zoo Story and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Three Tall Women.
'It is the best, most forceful play Albee has ever given us'. New York Post
Previews: 24 – 28 August
Opening Night: 29 August
Closes: 30 September
Venue: Fairfax
Cast includes: Ruth Cracknell, Pamela Rabe, Pippa Williamson
Direction: Wayne Harrison
Design: Angus Strathie
Lighting Design: Nick Schlieper
Winner: 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Best Play: 1994 New York Critics' Circle award.
Best Play: 1994 New York Outer Critics' Circle Award.
Best Play: 1994 London Evening Standard Award.
A Melbourne Theatre Company/Sydney Theatre Company co-production
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Neil Armfield's critically acclaimed production by Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre…
'It seems to me that Hamlet is a study of trust, or rather, of betrayal. It is a castle full of corners, and people listening and reporting to each other. We watch the way that relationships, parent-child, husband-wife, friend-friend and lover to lover, collapse under the weight of suspicion. In the absence of trust the mind and all our frames of reality spin out of control. This is why, when surrounded by suspicion and in the dead centre of the play, Hamlet holds Horatio to him and declares with such relief what Horatio's trust means to him:
" …give me that man
Neil Armfield
That is not passion's slave, and
I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my
heart of hearts
As I do thee (III,ii)'
'…Richard Roxburgh's Hamlet…a brilliant and, finally, heartbreaking performance…a trippingly tragic production of Hamlet – the most moving in memory…' The Bulletin
Please note special performance times: Tues–Sat 7.30pm, Sat matinee 1pm, Mon 6.30pm (as usual)
Previews: 14 – 18 September
Opening Night: 19 September
Closes: 14 October
Playhouse Cast includes: Cate Blanchett, Peter Carroll, Ralph Cotterill, Gillian Jones, Jacek Koman, Keith Robinson, Richard Roxburgh, Geoffrey Rush, Kevin Smith, David Wenham
Direction: Neil Armfield
Design: Dan Potra
Costume Design: Anna Borghesi and Tess Schofield
Lighting Designer: Rory Dempster
Composer: John Rodgers
Assistant Director: Greg McLean
A Belvoir Street Theatre production
This production of Hamlet was first performed at Belvoir Street Theatre on 23 June 1994
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The World premiere of a new work by two of Australia's most exciting writers…
Mathew Molyneaux and Nina Moss are married. They have two children. Their relationship is seemingly dynamic, demanding and indestructible.
Mathew commissions a biography of Lawrence Clifford: successful businessman, philanthropist and soon to be Australian of the Year. And he knows the perfect person to take it on – Nina.
The relationship between biographer and subject is complex and consuming. Nina is captivated by Lawrence from the start. But nobody thought they would fall in love. Certainly not Mathew. Now their marriage moves irrevocably toward the point of separation. And neither knows how to stop it.There are two sides to every separation. Two truths. His story and her story. Andrew Bovell tells Mathew's story. Hannie Rayson tells Nina's. Their collaboration is a fascinating account of contemporary relationships and the changing morality which underpins them.
Previews: 10 – 14 November
Opening Night: 15 November
Closes: 23 December
Venue: Fairfax
Direction: Robyn Nevin
Design: Dale Ferguson
Lighting Design: Jamieson Lewis
World Premiere of an MTC commissioned play
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