Community Theatre

TAKE a family from Lancashire in the north of England in 1880. Add their boot shop business, employees, customers and friends. Throw in a few parallels to Cinderella and King Lear.

What do you get? Classic comedy Hobson’s Choice, at Playlovers (WA) from April 27.

Written by Harold Brighouse, the title comes from the expression “Hobson's choice”, meaning no choice at all.

The play has been adapted for film several times, as well as the Broadway musical Walking Happy.

Melbourne’s CLOC Musical Theatre has a firmly established and well‑earned reputation as one of Australia’s pre‑eminent community musical theatre companies.  Since its establishment in 1964, CLOC has produced 95 shows covering the entire gamut of music theatre, incorporating numerous Australasian premieres, and has won over 100 Music Theatre Guild awards for excellence, including eight times being awarded Production of the Year.

REAL-life stories of former inmates at the notorious Parramatta Girls’ Training School in NSW have been combined Alana Valentine’s Parramatta Girls, making its WA premiere at the Old Mill Theatre from May 11, 2012.

Parramatta Girls follows the story of eight girls at their 40-year reunion.

The girls were innocent victims of a harsh regime but had their own ways of coping with the system that oppressed them, trying to make good in tough times.

Castle Hill Players (NSW) will present Matt Cameron’s Australian drama Ruby Moon from April 13, 2012.

Ray: It's not her Sylvie. You know that.

Sylvie: Let me pretend.

Ray: It's all we do.

Ruby Moon is a hauntingly evocative journey into the hearts and minds of Sylvia and Ray Moon, whose little girl Ruby disappeared without trace from her own street in Flaming Tree Grove. Itis an atmospheric blend of drama, pathos and unexpected humour.