New Theatre: Season 2014

The season for 2014 at New Theatre in King Street, Newtown, ranges across drama, comedy and musical theatre, promising Sydney audiences will enjoy the work of local and international writers and the talents of seven women directors!

There are two Australian premieres, two Sydney premieres, adaptations of beloved novels, and revivals of a much-loved Australian contemporary play and a ground-breaking gay work.

Australian playwrights are represented by Hilary Bell and the father/daughter team of Peter and Anna Goldsworthy. From the US come plays by Charles Durang and Lanford Wilson, while flying the flag for the UK are Richard Bean and Peter Nichols.

The directorial team for 2014 includes New Theatre Artistic Director Louise Fischer (Vernon God Little, Enron), Alice Livingstone (The Weir, Top Girls), Emma Louise (Assistant Director, Jerusalem), Rosane McNamara (Entertaining Mr Sloane, Hay Fever), Annette Rowlinson (Parramatta Girls), Melita Rowston (MilkMilkLemonade) and NIDA 2013 Directors’ Course graduate Elsie Edgerton-Till, making her New Theatre debut.

THE PRODUCTIONS

PRIVATES ON PARADE

BY PETER NICHOLS. MUSIC BY DENIS KING.

11 FEBRUARY – 8 MARCH

Presented as part of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival

When young and innocent Private Steven Flowers is posted to the British Army’s ‘Song and Dance Unit South East Asia’ to entertain the troops during the Malayan Emergency in 1948, he finds himself in a company of (mostly gay) military misfits.

The star of the troupe is flamboyant Captain ‘Auntie’ Terri Dennis, a soldier who much prefers lipstick and a feather boa to a rifle and fatigues.  While their martinet commander Major Flack, a religious fanatic and patriot, is greatly discomforted by his men performing in drag, Terri delights in running the gamut from Carmen Miranda to Marlene Dietrich to Vera Lynn.

Peter Nichol’s outrageously funny play, part satirical revue, part coming-of-age drama, is underpinned by a darker and more poignant reality. The political themes of colonialism, revolution, homophobia and racism are contrasted with personal stories of fear, loneliness, and finding (and keeping) love, all served up in a camp concoction of song, dance, blokes in frocks and very naughty laughs.

Director: Alice Livingstone

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

BY CHRISTOPHER SERGEL, from the novel by Harper Lee

18 MARCH – 19 APRIL

Six-year old Scout’s world is turned upside down when her widowed father, lawyer Atticus Finch, defends a young black man accused of raping a white woman. 

As tensions erupt and neighbours take sides in the life-and-death case, it is Scout’s clear-eyed courage in the face of ignorance and bigotry that ultimately brings hope to a damaged community. 

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel was first published IN 1960 at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Set against the backdrop of entrenched prejudices and deep inequality in the segregated world of smalltown Depression-era Alabama, its plea for tolerance and human decency helped change the way America viewed itself. Christopher Sergel’s acclaimed adaptation brings to life the compassion, humanity and childish wonder of Lee’s great work.

Director: Annette Rowlinson

MAESTRO

BY ANNA GOLDSWORTHY & PETER GOLDSWORTHY, adapted from his novel

29 APRIL – 24 MAY

Sydney Premiere

As a young boy in post-war Darwin, Paul Crabbe begins to take piano lessons from the enigmatic Eduard Keller, an Austrian émigré with a shadowy past and a pedagogical pedigree traced back to Liszt and Beethoven. 

For Keller, escaping his ghosts in the isolation of the Top End, music has always been his way of dealing with the horrors of the world. For Paul, learning the piano starts as an inconvenience but soon becomes an obsession, his ticket out of a town full of drifters and misfits. The relationship between the ‘maestro’ and his pupil is an uneasy one but as Paul grows from ex-obsessed adolescent into self-questioning man, he learns about life through music, and through Keller’s experiences and understanding of human nature. 

Goldworthy’s coming-of-age novel, voted one of the Top 40 Australian books of all time, has been turned into a play about love, betrayal, loyalty, guilt, and the pursuit of artistic excellence.

Director: Rosane McNamara

WHY TORTURE IS WRONG AND THE PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEM

BY CHRISTOPHER DURANG

3 – 28 JUNE

Australian Premiere
Felicity wakes up after a drunken blackout to find she’s married to a sexist, violent loser who calls himself Zamir, claims to be Irish, and makes Osama bin Laden look like a moderate.

Is her new husband a terrorist? Is her father’s seemingly innocuous butterfly collecting actually a front for his involvement in a shadow government?  Is her mother insane or just a harmless, if obsessive, theatre buff?  And what’s with the minister who directs porno and the government operative with malfunctioning underwear?  Felicity’s world is plunging into crisis and Homeland Security never looked so insecure. 

Director: Melita Rowston

BOOK OF DAYS

BY LANFORD WILSON

8 JULY – 9 AUGUST

Australian Premiere

In a parochial Missouri town where life revolves around the cheese factory, the fundamentalist church and the community theatre, book-keeper Ruth lands the title role in a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan. 

When Walt, the town patriarch, dies in a hunting accident, Ruth’s suspicions are aroused, putting her in direct conflict with powerful forces in her community. As her obsessive quest for the truth consumes her life, Ruth begins to embody the character she is playing on stage: crusading, single-minded, fearless Joan of Arc.

A comedy, a tragedy and a murder mystery, the play explores questions of morality and redemption, of identity and community, and the threat posed by the religious right.  With echoes of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, this is whimsical, engaging and politically charged storytelling from one of America’s most revered contemporary playwrights.

Director: Elsie Edgerton-Till

WOLF LULLABY

BY HILARY BELL

19 AUGUST – 13 SEPTEMBER

In a desolate Tasmanian country town, a small child is murdered and suspicion falls on nine-year-old Lizzie. Her mother Angela is faced with the heartbreaking choice between ignoring the suspicion that her daughter is guilty and handing her over to the police. 

As the investigation progresses, Lizzie is not the only one who is changed forever by the events that unfold. The adults around her, bewildered and full of denial, find their accepted beliefs challenged as the world they think they know disintegrates, exposing a legacy of violence and deceit.

The debut play from the winner of the Patrick White Playwrights’ Fellowship for 2013, taps into the tensions, conflicts and dynamics of tight-knit communities to explore the disturbing subject of children who kill the fine line between innocence and amorality, and to pose the question: is there such a thing as intrinsic evil?

Director: Emma Louise

HARVEST

BY RICHARD BEAN

7 OCTOBER – 8 NOVEMBER

Sydney Premiere

This sprawling comic romp follows four generations of a Yorkshire pig-farming family as they fight to protect their livelihood over the course of the 20th century. 

At the heart of the story is the life of William Harrison, beginning as a 19 year old eager for adventure in the trenches of the Somme during WWI and ending as a wise-cracking 109 year old whose candle shows no signs of snuffing out. 

The Harrisons are battlers and survivors, and no amount of adversity – be it two world wars, the Depression, fatal shootings, armed robbery, attempted rape or commercial failure - can extinguish their intrinsic optimism and pragmatic outlook.  Bean, the celebrated writer of One Man, Two Guvnors, has created a theatrical landscape of epic proportions and infused this family saga of life on the land with a wickedly quirky humour and a deep understanding of human nature.

Director: Louise Fischer

Bookings: NEWTHEATRE.ORG.AU