Partly drawn from the life of its Pulitzer Prize winning American writer Paula Vogel, Mother Play is theatre at its finest. It is a play about a lack of acceptance, about hurt and pain, courage and love in its many hues. It is a work built on recollections, those of the daughter in the piece,…
Life hasn’t turned out the way 42-year-old Liverpool housewife Shirley Valentine had envisaged. Married with two adult children – a boy and a girl – routine and boredom see her literally speaking to the wall for company and imbibing in more than the odd tipple. Her husband Joe (who we never get to meet) takes…
We’re in the 19th century. Trusting Bella Manningham is fragile. Not long married, she met her now husband Jack in Switzerland and they connected instantly. They moved into an old house – complete with dark, wood panelled walls – in London, but this is a home with a nefarious history. Its previous owner was murdered in a…
An equally amusing and moving theatre work, Tiny Beautiful Things from Queensland Theatre grips the audience from the first minute to the last. A sparse domestic set design of kitchen, living room and stairs leading up to an unseen upper floor (courtesy of Simone Romaniuk) shows us the home of Sugar – a woman who’s…
Tessa Ensler (Sheridan Harbridge) is a successful barrister. She knows the tricks of the trade and defends her clients – many alleged sexual offenders – vehemently. She relishes the game … circling witnesses until she is ready to pounce, having lulled them into a false sense of security. She is good … very good. Those who know her,…
Queensland Theatre can’t go wrong opening its 2023 season with this entertaining and sometimes searing comedy-drama from the prodigious David Williamson (Emerald City, Don’s Party, The Removalists and many more). Family dynamics clash with topical politics and social issues in the tight, interval-free 90-minute play directed by Artistic Director, Lee Lewis (Prima Facie, Mouthpiece). Family…
“You have to write everything down,” newbie funeral director Steve (Mitchell Bourke) is told by a colleague on his first call-out. Thankfully for theatre-goers, Toowoomba born playwright Steve Pirie has done exactly that, with Return to the Dirt, winner of the prestigious Queensland Premier’s Drama Award (QPDA), the largest playwriting award in the country, which…
Mouthpiece … it is the name of an artwork by Declan Swan (Jayden Popik in an impressive Queensland Theatre debut), but it also has multiple other meanings within Kieran Hurley’s very clever and often ironic award-winning play of the same name. ‘I wanna live like common people, I wanna do whatever common people do’, Pulp’s…
