Genesian Theatre Season 2016
Sydney’s longest operating central city community theatre company, the Genesian, has unveiled its 72nd season including two premiere productions for the city.
Theatre Director Roger Gimblett said the theatre was fortunate to obtain the rights to a new adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel Far From the Madding Crowd.
“This is a terrific adaptation, originally written by Mark Healy for the acclaimed English Touring Theatre. It tells the intensely dramatic story of the central character, Bathsheba Everdene, and her three suitors, utilising music, dance and physical theatre. The aim is for the audience to be transported to Hardy’s Wessex countryside with storms, fires and even sheep dipping (!) all being represented on stage. It’s a challenging piece but a wonderful one.”
In 2007 Guardian newspaper readers nominated Far from The Madding Crowd as one of the 10 great love stories of all time.
Also challenging is the theatre’s musical for the season. Our House takes the songs of English super group Madness and combines them with a script from top British playwright Tim Firth (Calendar Girls). Gimblett said the Olivier Award winning show featured a very funny and ultimately deeply moving story about a 16 year old boy growing up in Camden, London and the two paths his life might take after the events of his birthday.
“It’s a bit like a Sliding Doors scenario – the audience follows two alternative versions of his story but it is told with great heart and ultimately it is about family and doing the right thing, while at the same time featuring Firth’s humour and classic songs such as ‘Baggy Trousers’, ‘It Must be Love’ and of course ‘Our House’. The company would be looking for a cast of around 17 with a majority having to be young triple-threats.There is a lot of dance in the piece, which on our smallish stage can be problematic, though it has recently been successfully staged at the even smaller 50 seat Union Theatre in London, so there is a precedent. It is a fantastic show and we will be pulling out all the stops to do it justice,”Gimblett said.
The remaining plays in the six play season are David Williamson’ s clever examination of rivalry in the publishing industry Nothing Personal, a Halloween timed version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the perennial Genesian favourite, an Agatha Christie – Appointment With Death. Finally, the theatre will stage Shakespeare’s ‘battle of the sexes’ comedy Much Ado About Nothing as the last play of the season.
The Genesian Theatre has been a vital part of Sydney’s cultural heritage since 1944. As well as having featured John Bell, Peter Carroll, Bryan Brown, Judi Farr and a young Baz Luhrmann on its stage over the years, more recently the atmospheric old theatre has been graced by the presence of rising stars including Rowan Witt, Lib Campbell, Tom Tilley, Bianca Brady and Aaron Glenane.
Related Reading
Community Theatre Seasons 2016
Images (from top): Peter Ryan and Tom Massey in The Tempest; the company of The Picture of Dorian Gray; Lana Kershaw, Elizabeth Macgregor and Dominique Nesbitt in Chekhov’s Three Sisters; Bryan Brown, Douglas Hedge, May Pusey and Elizabeth Larkin in A Man For All Seasons, 1970; John Bell and Marlene Horsell in The Rivals, 1962; James Quinn, Peter Carroll in King Lear, 1967; and David Brown, Judi Farr, Ted Lansdowne in The Skin of our Teeth, 1958.
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