All About Theatre

When was it? How long? It seems a lifetime ago. Lloyd always said that in the Theatre a lifetime was a season, and a season a lifetime.


And so the new year begins. As the final embers of the Sydney Festival slowly burn from our memory our theatres begin their programmes in earnest.

The coming few months has some treats worth looking at. From the alternative to the mainstages - from the underground to the spectacular - there's a little of something for everyone.

One such event which is quickly becoming a highlight in my calendar is the wonderful Imperial Panda Festival. It made such an impression last year that the City of Sydney has honoured its potential and thrown it a few grand. It was also the recipient of two nominations at the inaugural Sydney Music Art and Culture (SMAC) Awards.

It's a festival which is starting to capture an underground urban grit by profiling diverse, erratic and fearless performers. Using alternative spaces and galleries around the inner city, it attracts a young and hip crowd quite happy to plonk themselves on a milk crate with a plastic cup of cheap wine in their hand.

This year they open the festival with the premiere season of Kittenbone Bridge, a new play by Nick Coyle, which was first developed as part of the Wharf2Loud PUSH programme in 07.

There's a host of other new shows from groups including the Brown Council and Suitcase Royale. And of course the ever popular Erotic Fan Fiction evening returns - for those who last year experienced the perverse writing of Brendan Cowell and his account of the Australian Cricket team knocking it about in the sub-tropical heat of India will know what I mean. You can check out the Panda website HERE.

Griffin Theatre launched their 09 season a month ago and it contains some real gems. The highlight would have to be the show which opens this evening - Holiday from Ranters Theatre. I caught the premiere of it in Melbourne last year (thanks to the ever kind Alison Croggon who took me along) and I can't recommend it enough.

Holiday is a theatre experience which creeps up on you with a writing style which rarely graces the stages of Sydney. It is poignant, clever, funny and brutally relevant. And - it isn't verbatim theatre - hooray!

Speaking of which, surely 2009 must mark the end of verbatim theatre. Haven't we had enough already? I already have SBS at home, I don't need it my theatre as well do I?

I loved Damien Miller's The Modern International Dead which opened at the Griffin last year. In fact I loved it so much I think it represents the high note of locally produced verbatim theatre and now there is absolutely no reason to do it anymore. 

The rest of Griffin's programme for the year appears to be a well placed collection of local stories from around the country which I am really looking forward to. Their programme can be found HERE.

Even though Performance Space go into 09 with a new director and a new vision, the first few months of programming are part of the gradual handover from previous Director Fiona Winning. 

P Space kick off the year with a dance solo from the indefatigable Ros Warby and her show Monumental. Just have a quick look at the creative titles of her collaborators (Lighting Projection & Set Design, Music, Cinematography, Film Editor, Costume Designer, Costume Design Consultant, Black Hat, White Cap, Sound Design)  and you start to get a sense of where this show might be going.

Following on from the dance solo is the always brilliant Quick and Dirty extravaganza as part of the Mardi Gras Festival. It hasn't suffered from the move from Cleveland Street to Carriageworks (apart from the ever-restrictive, ever-suffocating, ever-ridiculous enforcement of the outside drinking policy - for the love of God, when are we going to get that sorted???).

Performance, puppetry and installation creators My Patricia Darling, dance force Splintergroup and young performers Team MESS also make a big appearance over the Summer/Autumn.

The mainstages also have a diverse array of productions premiering over the coming few months. Of particular interest is Baghdad Wedding which opens next week at Company B coming after a relatively modest opening at the wonderful SOHO Theatre in London, the new Marion Potts production of Venus and Adonis from Bell Shakespeare and STC, Travesties also at the STC and the new co-production between Griffin and the STC of Concussion. 

The independent sector is also getting into the swing of things. The Old Fitz kicks off its year with Cherry Smoke, a show from the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe and which is coincidentally also premiering in New York at the same time.  

Downstairs at Belvoir Street Theatre is their anti-Putin Russian play Ladybird which I profiled in depth last week. B Sharp will be launching the rest of their season in a few weeks. The New Theatre (who have finally, finally, finally got a new website) have also begun their year with a heavy Mardi Gras theme as usual. Last night they opened with the Tony Award winning play Take Me Out by Richard Greenberg. This is then followed by a production of the Herbal Bed and then the infamously funny Cosi by Louis Nowra. 

Amazingly, the TAP Gallery is still pumping away as one of the quieter and more alternative spaces. They have a pretty outrageous Mardi Gras show on at the moment called Vixen Noir in Sweet Deliverance: the perverted sunshine tour which follows the life of a sex goddess. There's even a warning to go with it - 18+, Sexual Content, Coarse Language and Nudity (thank god Mardi Gras is only once a year).

This is then followed up by another Mardi Gras show with a title of such originality, it'll take your breath away... Hard On. I don't need to explain it any further - but if you want to know more, go to the website. 

The Seymour Centre has a programme a little less ... a little less ... well, a little less something as they premiere Gutenberg! The Musical, another musical with an exclamation mark. I believe it is some type of a spoof, but I rarely understand in-house musical theatre community jokes.

But after Gutenberg! is a return season of The Beauty Queen of Leenane from the master director Maeliosa Stafford. 

So there's your next couple of months sorted. 

Anything else of interest, let me know.