What are the lengths to which people will go to get what they want? What does it mean to be a mother? These are the pivotal questions posed in the acerbic drama, Petty, Cash, a world premiere work written by prolific young playwright Thomas Ian Doyle. Centrelink has earmarked a wad of cash for development…
Relationships and love are sorely tested and put to the sword in C’est la Vie, the searing world premiere drama from British playwright Stephanie Silver that director Thomas Ian Doyle and the cast put together with only 10 days of rehearsals. Each of the couples here has hit major roadblocks from which there may be…
As the program told us, when Endgame was first performed in 1957 it polarized audiences and critics alike. People saw Beckett as either a genius or a babbling fraud. I’m one of the latter. I put Beckett alongside of Picasso as a successful deceiver of people in an Emperor’s new clothes sort of way. But…
David Burton the playwright, was a lapsed Catholic who returned to worship when he discovered Fr Peter Kennedy’s breakaway congregation in the Trades and Labour Council hall in South Brisbane, just down the road from St Mary’s Church, in the late 2000s. Fr Kennedy had been a bit of a revolutionary pastor, welcoming gay and…
Now reworked, with a new creative team, this play was the first performed by The Owl and Cat Theatre, when Gabrielle Savrone and Thomas Ian Doyle took over the venue from Jason Cavanagh at the start of last year. A woman, a playwright, has been married for eight years but has fallen deeply in love…
Noel Coward, at the age of 25, wrote and starred in The Vortex, opening in December in 1924, which settled into a long London run. Sheridan Morley tells us in his biography of Noel Coward, A Talent to Amuse: On the principle that success breeds other successes, once The Vortex was an established hit both…
The Golden Age, by Louis Nowra was published in 1985. The first production was given at the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne, Directed by Rex Cramphorn. I first saw the play in a NIDA production by Neil Armfield with Richard Roxburgh, as Francis – it was a truly memorable production. I have had, always, a ‘romance’…
Cassie (Claire Sara) and Kurt (Timmy Knowles) are a mega-rich couple in their late thirties, who have more money that most people would know what to do with. You see they have just won $337 million in the lottery and how do they celebrate? They don’t quit their jobs, rather they hire an escort –…
If you want to have a laugh and a bit of fun in the frenzied days leading into the festive season look no further than the latest offering at The Owl and Cat Theatre. After Party was written by Michael Thebridge, his first produced play, and is skilfully directed by Gabrielle Savrone. It is the…
Well written and largely skilfully executed, this is a sexually charged drama set in the midst of the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008 that left 164 people dead and more than 300 wounded. Marika Marosszeky plays Arizona Snow, an American porn actress being interviewed in her hotel room by an Australian journalist, Martin Morecombe…
