THEATRE 09: WHAT’S ON OFFER
SYDNEY Theatre Company was first to launch its 2009 list, then the Ensemble and finally, this week, Belvoir St. There are rich pickings to be had in each theatre’s subscriber season, depending on your inclinations. Being spoiled for choice is possibly the main problem.
Everyone likes a list and if you’re into making them, see whether yours tallies with mine. In no particular order:
Julie Forsyth (pictured here) is a living legend and it’s only because she lives mainly in Melbourne that she isn’t up there with the opera house and the harbour bridge as icons of Sydney life. She returns in one of the great plays of the 20th century, Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days. If anyone you know has a ticket and you haven’t: steal it. (Belvoir St.)
Cate Blanchett isn’t doing a staged reading of the phone book in 2009, which is a pity because there are many squealing ninnies who would pay good money to see it; and that would save all the trouble of rehearsals and picking a great play and director. Instead they’ll have to put up with sitting through an entire play – A Streetcar Named Desire – directed by Liv Ullman. (Sydney Theatre Company.)
Kerry Walker is an actor’s actor, which is probably why she moved to Melbourne a few years back. One of Patrick White’s all-time favourite gals (Signal Driver, The Ham Funeral) she’s back to Sydney to take the lead in Dorothy Hewett’s The Man From Mukinupin. And whether or not you like the play – Hewett is an acquired taste that some never acquire – the chance to see Ms Walker in full flight is not to be passed up. (Belvoir St.)
Queenie van de Zandt is a performer whose time has finally come (she’s been waiting for overnight success for at least five years.). She takes on the role made (in)famous by Alison Steadman in Mike Leigh’s Abigail’s Party. It’s difficult to think of another actress who could do the blithely toxic social satire any better. (Ensemble Theatre.)
Going Out With a Bang is the STC Actors Company in an epic eight-hour, two-part adaptation by Tom Wright and Benedict Andrews of Shakespeare’s regal warmongers in The Wars of the Roses, parts 1 and 2. Cate Blanchett, who knows a thing or two about playing English queens, joins the team in their last hurrah. (STC as part of the Sydney Festival and also playing the Perth Festival.)
Gethsemane, you may recall, was the garden in which Jesus experienced betrayal and his especially dark night of the soul. It’s also the title of David Hare’s latest play. It was seen in the UK to represent his anger at Tony Blair/New Labour’s betrayal of those who elected them. Neil Armfield has a great track record with Hare plays (Stuff Happens, The Judas Kiss) and is very excited about this one. (Belvoir St.)
Alan Ayckbourn has just retired from his Scarborough theatre in Yorkshire, age 70, after writing and premiering there virtually all his vast oeuvre of mainly brilliant and always under-rated comedies of middle class, social-climbing life. Absurd Person Singular is classic Ayckbourn: multi-layered and capable of a surface reading as well as deeper pleasures; and gruesomely funny. (Ensemble Theatre.)
Belarus Free Theatre is outlawed back home, so audiences are rung on their mobiles and taken by bus to secret performances in all kinds of odd spaces. And you think the STC ladies loos are a problem. Belarus is bringing Being Harold Pinter which sounds a bit like Being John Malkovich only it’s about a great playwright and political activist rather than a self conscious eccentric. (Belvoir St.)
What else? Travesties is one of Tom Stoppard’s best (STC); The Little Dog Laughed is an unusual comedy choice for the Ensemble and brings Allie Fowler back to the stage, which can only be good; Richard Tulloch, Kim Carpenter and Belvoir combine on The Book of Everything. A show for all ages, particularly if you enjoyed Small Poppies. New Australian work is represented on a large scale by Andrew Bovell’s deserved big hit of this year’s Adelaide Festival, When the Rain Stops Falling (STC.)
And there’s more without even breaking out the steak knives. Check out the websites and get deciding double quick if you don’t want to have to resort to violence or subterfuge.
Belvoir St: www.belvoir.com.au; Ensemble Theatre: www.ensemble.com.au; STC: www.sydneytheatre.com.au
