The Old Fitz Theatre In 2018
Red Line Productions’ 2018 season at the Old Fitz Theatre in Woolloomooloo features 3 World Premieres (including a musical), 3 Australian Premieres, 2 Sydney Premieres and 2 great contemporary love stories.
2018 also sees the launch of Red Line UNDERGROUND on Monday nights, including Burlesque with Hannah Raven, Just The Two Of Us with Scott Witt, Bang Bang Rodeo with Jane Watt
“Theatre is raw. It’s entertaining. It’s rebellious. Funny, like wet your pants funny. Sad, like wet your face sad. You don’t need to be a genius, or own a collared shirt, or be sober. Theatre is a movie that’s different every time. Theatre can be a great night out for everyone, if you go to the right theatre. Welcome to 2018 at Red Line. The theatre for everyone, literally!” says Red Line Productions’ Artistic Director Andrew Henry
2018 SEASON
There Will Be A Climax
9 January - 3 February 2018
By Alexander Berlage & The Company
Directed By Alexander Berlage
Produced by Red Line Productions
Cast: Toby Blome, Oliver Crump, Geneva Schofield, Alex Stylianou, Contessa Treffone
An assorted few are convinced they are stuck on a spinning revolve.
"You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round
You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round"
- dead or alive, 1984
This production was originally presented at The National Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney.
Metamorphoses
8 February - 10 March 2018
Written and Originally Directed by Mary Zimmerman
Directed by Dino Dimitriadis
Produced by Apocalypse Theatre Company in association with Red Line Productions
Re-imagined for the 40th Anniversary of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
Set in and around a body of water, Metamorphoses collides the ancient and the modern to celebrate the primal body and the staying power of love and desire in the face of constant and inevitable change. Savage and tender, queer and irreverent, with vivid imagery and visionary theatricality, Ovid’s poem of ancient Greek tales is roused to soul-stirring life.
Nominated for three Tony Awards including Best Play
Suitable for audiences 18+
The Wolves
14 March - 14 April 2018
Australian Premiere
Written by Sarah De Lappe
Directed by Jessica Arthur
Produced by Red Line Productions
Left quad. Right quad. Lunge. A girls’ indoor soccer team warms up. From the safety of their suburban stretch circle, the team navigates big questions and wages tiny battles with all the vim and vigour of a pack of adolescent warriors. A portrait of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for nine girls who just want to score some goals.
Finalist – 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
The Effect
19 April - 19 May 2018
Written by Lucy Prebble
Directed by Andrew Henry
Produced by Fishy Productions in association with Red Line Productions
The Effect is a clinical romance. Two young volunteers agree to take part in a drug trial and succumb to their mutual attraction, threatening to de-rail the trial to the frustration of the clinicians involved. This funny, moving play explores questions of sanity and the limits of medicine.
Stalking The Bogeyman
23 May - 23 June 2018
Australian Premiere
Written by Markus Potter & David Holthouse
Directed by Neil Gooding
Produced by Neil Gooding in association with Red Line Productions
“This time last year I was plotting to kill a man.”
Twenty-five years after he was sexually assaulted, award-winning journalist David Holthouse learns his ‘bogeyman’ has moved to his new neighbourhood. Armed with a pistol and a plan, he plots to enact revenge on the man who stole his childhood. First told in the Denver Westwood newspaper and subsequently featured on the popular weekly radio broadcast This American Life, Stalking The Bogeyman is a thrilling true story of one man’s search for vengeance.
Permission to Spin
27 June - 28 July 2018
World Premiere
Written by Mary Rachel Brown
Produced by Apocalypse Theatre Company in association with Red Line Productions
Meet Carl, a failed rock star turned children’s entertainer. Carl can write a kid’s song on the back of a beer coaster in two minutes. This talent has made him one of the richest and most unhappy men in Australia. Things take a turn for the worst when Carl decides to reinvent himself as a moral crusader. The problem is Carl underestimated the leap from children’s music to truly standing up for your beliefs, and he comes out looking like a poor man’s Bono.
Permission to Spin is a funny till it’s not cage fight between art and ethics; a Trump-esque allegory about men that carry their school-yard bully techniques all the way to adulthood. This play is for everyone that thinks children’s music is torture.
Warning: contains swearing, drug use, sexual references and actors in animal costumes (but no nudity).
King Of Pigs
1 August - 1 September 2018
World Premiere
Written by Steve Rodgers
Directed by Blazey Best
Produced by Red Line Productions
One Woman. Four Men. She could be with any one of them; at twenty-two on a date on the Gold Coast, at thirty-one moving into an apartment in Albert Park, or at forty, happily married with a nine-year-old son living in Campsie. Four very different worlds share an identical space, our homes.
King of Pigs throws us into a blistering series of reality pockets. Each glimpse we get provides a momentary view of a vast panoramic lie. It’s a lie every man tells himself privately but every woman lives with publicly. King of Pigs is a direct response to the nature of power and the way men licence themselves to abuse it.
King of Pigs was developed with Playwriting Australia at the National Play Festival and in the National Script Workshop.
The Humans
5 September - 6 October 2018
Australian Premiere
Written by Stephen Karam
Directed by Anthea Williams
Produced by MopHead Productions in association with Red Line Productions
The Blake family have assembled for Thanksgiving dinner at the run-down Manhattan apartment of youngest daughter Brigid and her boyfriend Richard. Tragically, this middle-class clan seems to be spiralling toward perilous entropy.
Stephen Karam’s comedy-drama is written with a blend of documentary-like naturalism and theatrical daring. The Humans depicts the way we live now with precision and compassion. “We” being the non-one-percenters, most of whom are peering around anxiously at the uncertain future and the unsteady world, even as we fight through each day trying to keep optimism afloat in our hearts.
Tony Award Winner – Best Play 2016
Sherlock & Me
9 October - 10 November 2018
A World Premiere Musical
Written by Louis Nowra & Stewart D'arrietta
Produced by Red Line Productions
Texas, Queensland during the terrible floods: David Thackery, a New York university professor has escaped to the safety of a railway waiting room. Who should also seek refuge but his arch enemy in Sherlock Holmes studies, Reg Withers, a farmer and also a Holmesaphile.
Ferociously hungry and vicious wild dogs, as in The Hounds of Baskerville, surround the waiting room eager to devour the duo. And then there’s the problem of what happened to the owner of the waiting room – is he dead or not? There’s the mystery of a killer somewhere in Texas and the realisation that they will need each other to survive the flood. This musical tells the stories of two very different people who find that this accidental meeting will change their lives.
Eurydice
14 November - 15 December 2018
Sydney Premiere
Written by Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Claudia Barrie
Produced by Mad March Hare Theatre Company in association with Red Line Productions
Sarah Ruhl re-imagines the classic myth of Orpheus through the eyes of its heroine. Dying too young on her wedding day, Eurydice must journey to the Underworld, where she reunites with her father and struggles to remember her lost love. With contemporary characters, ingenious plot twists, and breathtaking visual effects, the play is a fresh look at a timeless love story.
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