Belvoir Season 2023

Belvoir has unveiled the ten mainstage productions that will make up its 2023 Season - from a Sondheim musical to a best-selling book adaptation, climate issues to exuberant comedy, and more - while shining the light on some incredible Australian artistic talents.

Belvoir Artistic Director, Eamon Flack said, “Theatre-going is one of life’s great acts of optimism. That’s never been truer than in these last few years. But Belvoir was born from optimism, so we’re getting on with doing what we do best: a lot with a little, and something for everyone. Our headlong love of Australian stories continues – seven of them, including two great new Indigenous plays, a Chinese-Australian comedy in three languages, a lesbian divorce dramedy (yes that’s a genre now), an astonishing, thought-provoking, heart-hitting play about life in the climate era, and Charlotte Wood’s beautiful novel The Weekend comes to the stage.

“Then there’s the music, and a lot of it this year – I guess because we’ve all had enough of realism in real life. We’re doing our first ever Stephen Sondheim musical. When he died last year the great Australian critic Peter Craven made the call that Sondheim is the Shakespeare of music theatre. We agree.

“Plus there’s Zahra Newman as Billie Holiday – say no more – and the return of the legendary Robyn Archer. Finally, there’s a piece of pure theatrical pleasure, a stage version of the (literally) magical anti-authoritarian novel The Master and Margarita, which we began work on in the darkest days of lockdown. We’ve gone looking for “classics” in new places, and this, alongside Into the Woods, are our offers.

“It’s a mad time to be alive, but Belvoir’s your yellow brick road through the demented wonderland of life on planet earth in 2023”.

 

BELVOIR’S 2023 SEASON

BLUE: 14 - 29 JANUARY

Blue is a playwriting debut, written and performed by the 2021 Balnaves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Fellow, Thomas Weatherall (Netflix’s Heartbreak High), and directed by Bangarra alumni Deborah Brown. This world premiere is a tender, exquisite monologue, Blue takes us deep into the beauty, and sadness, of a young life at its new beginning.

By Thomas Weatherall

Directed by Deborah Brown

A cast of three, including Thomas Weatherall

In association with Sydney Festival

Indigenous theatre at Belvoir supported by The Balnaves Foundation

BLESSED UNION: 2 FEBRUARY – 12 MARCH

Presented in association with Sydney WorldPride 2023, Blessed Union is the lesbian divorce comedy from the wicked mind of Queerstories’ Maeve Marsden (Mother’s Ruin: A Cabaret about Gin). This play follows Ruth and Judith, who have two kids and a manageable mortgage in the Inner West. Their life together is a progressive success story, so why should breaking up be any different?

The story of a new kind of family, Blessed Union is for anyone who’s looked at their life and wondered if there might be a better way to live it.

By Maeve Marsden

Directed by Hannah Goodwin

A cast of 4 including Danielle Cormack, Maude Davey

In association with Sydney WorldPride2023

Supported by Oranges and Sardines Foundation

INTO THE WOODS: 18 MARCH – 23 APRIL

Belvoir will present a brand-new production of classic, Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim, thirty-five years on from its Broadway premiere. Directed by Eamon Flack and featuring a cast of 12 including Tamsin Carroll (Dusty, Oliver!), Esther Hannaford (Mr Burns, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) and Justin Smith (Billy Elliot the Musical), this musical masterpiece begins, of course, with “Once upon a time…” By the end of the opening number not one but six fairytale plots have intertwined, as Cinderella, the Baker and his Wife, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack of beanstalk fame all head into the woods in search of love, happiness, wisdom. Three midnights of plot twists later they all end up singing “Happy ever after”. Except this is only the interval…

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book & originally directed on Broadway by James Lapine

Orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick

Licensed exclusively by Music Theatre International (Australasia)

Directed by Eamon Flack

A cast of 12 including Tamsin Carroll, Esther Hannaford, Justin Smith

Co-produced by Hayes Theatre Co

Supported by Chair’s Circle

AT WHAT COST?: 4 MAY – 21 MAY

At What Cost?, from Belvoir’s 2022 season, returns for a limited time with its original cast before embarking on a national tour. Written by Palawa writer and 2019 Balnaves Fellow Nathan Maynard, At What Cost? is a robust story of country, set in Tasmania. Every year more and more folk are claiming to be Palawa. Are they legit? Or are they ‘tick-a-box’? Who decides? And how?

Writer and Associate Director Nathan Maynard

Directed by Isaac Drandic

With Luke Carroll, Sandy Greenwood, Ari Maza Long, Alex Malone

SCENES FROM THE CLIMATE ERA: 27 MAY – 25 JUNE

From the mind of climate expert and playwright David Finnigan (Kill Climate Deniers), Scenes from the Climate Era is exactly what it says it is – more than fifty small plays that catch the exhilaration, frustration and fascination of living in a time of total environmental change, spanning from the recent past into the far future. Directed by Carissa Licciardello (Opening Night, A Room of One’s Own) and featuring a cast of six, including Abbie-lee Lewis (ABC’s Blak Comedy), Brandon McClelland (Packer & Sons) and Charles Wu (Jasper Jones).

By David Finnigan

Directed by Carissa Licciardello

A cast of six including Abbie-lee Lewis, Brandon McClelland, Charles Wu

Supported by Oranges and Sardines, Patty Akopiantz & Justin Punch

MISS PEONY: 1 – 30 JULY

2023 will see the twice Covid-delayed world premiere from the writer of Single Asian Female. Michelle Law’s Miss Peony is a glitzy, glamorous and slightly unhinged comedy about being caught between two generations, two cultures and the ghosts of generations past coming back to haunt you. In a first, Miss Peony will be performed in three languages: as in real life, these characters switch between English, Cantonese and Mandarin, so the show is subtitled in all three languages.

Written by Michelle Law,

Directed by Courtney Stewart

With Gabrielle Chan, Jing-Xuan Chan, Michelle Law, Mabel Li, Shirong Wu, Charles Wu

In association with Arts Centre Melbourne, Queensland Performing Arts Centre

Supported by Nelson Meers Foundation

THE WEEKEND: 5 AUGUST – 3 SEPTEMBER

Adapted from Charlotte Wood’s bestselling novel, The Weekend follows three old friends and one old dog. Sylvie has died, and she left behind three best friends who we find haven’t been as honest - or as good friends - as they thought. Directed by Sarah Goodes (The Sugar House), The Weekend is a story of growing older, age, taking stock of life lived and how still to live.

Based on a novel by Charlotte Wood

Adapted by Sue Smith

Directed by Sarah Goodes

A cast of four including Belinda Giblin, Toni Scanlan, Melita Jurisc

Supported by The Group

LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR & GRILL: 14 SEPTEMBER – 15 OCTOBER

Zahra Newman plays Billie Holiday. It’s 1959, in a bar in South Philadelphia. It’s a bit rundown. You wouldn’t know it, but we’re in a moment of history – one of Billie Holiday’s legendary last performances. As she sings her set (‘Taint Nobody’s Business If I Do, Strange Fruit, What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Easy Livin’, God Bless the Child, and more) she shares the story of her life - a bit risqué, humorous, political, ecstatic, tragic.

Featuring Zahra Newman (The Book of Mormon), this hit cabaret-style play makes its Australian debut following in its box office record-breaking run on Broadway.

Written by Lanie Robertson

Directed by Mitchell Butel

Featuring Zahra Newman and a live band

Musical arrangements by Danny Holgate

Co-produced with Melbourne Theatre Company, State Theatre Company of South Australia

ROBYN ARCHER: 18 – 29 OCTOBER

Robyn Archer – icon, legend of the Australian stage and provocateur – is joined by a trio of Australia’s finest stage musicians (piano accordion virtuoso George Butrumlis, actor and multi-instrumentalist Cameron Goodall on guitar, and Enio Pozzebon on keyboards) to perform a rich rendition of songs describing our country.

Devised and performed by Robyn Archer

Accordion/vocals by George Butrumlis

Guitar/vocals by Cameron Goodall

Keyboard/vocals by Enio Pozzebon

Originally commissioned by Queensland Theatre

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA: 11 NOVEMBER – 10 DECEMBER

Written in secret in the gloom of repression, passed around under the nose of the state police, The Master and Margarita became a legend long before the novel was published. Now this phenomenon of world literature, told via a giant talking cat, a mad novelist and an ill autocrat, is presented in a brand-new adaptation by Eamon Flack, featuring a cast of 11 including Paula Arundell (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), Rebecca Massey (Cloudstreet), and  Mark Winter in his Belvoir debut.

Adapted and directed by Eamon Flack

From the book by Mikhail Bulgakov

A cast of 11 including Paula Arundell, Rebecca Massey, Mark Winter, Josh Price

Supported by Creative Development Fund

Subscriptions for Belvoir’s 2023 season are on sale now via www.belvoir.com.au.