To celebrate lucky 2013, until January 13 we’re offering 30% off Thursday and Sunday tickets to our 2013 SYDNEY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL: Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It which opens 17 January. Quote promotional code LUCKY13 when you purchase your tickets. Offer ends midnight 13 January 2013 (applies to Thurs and Sun performances only).
Posted in Performance dates, Special offers
Tagged festival, shakespeare, special offer, sydney
Tell Me On A Sunday
By Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Lyrics by Don Black
Phoenix Theatre, Bridge St. Coniston
Phoenix Theatre Director: ( Musical Director:Peter Copeland )
2nd to 17th November (Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun ) at 8:00 pm, (Extra 3:00pm on Sat 17th.) Sun 3:00pm only.
Bookings www.phoenixtheatre.net.au Enquiries 0407 067 343
Ticket Prices: $20 and $25. Wednesday nights all tickets $20
A two-act song cycle, tells the “sex in the city” style story of a woman (known only as the woman) who after a relationship breakup decides to fly to New York for a change of life. Shortly after she arrives in New York City she embarks on a search for love and a better life as a vibrant career woman in the big apple.
The production is a one Woman show and focuses on the character of “the Woman” who shares the stage with the orchestra and uses them as stand ins for friends and lovers.
The woman is played by the amazing Charmaine Gibbs who recently played to sell out audiences as “Maria” in the Arcadians production of “The Sound of music”.
Cast: Charmaine Gibbs
Posted in Performance dates
Antipodean Opera
with Mountain Opera Chorus presents:
La Traviata
by Giuseppe Verdi
Sung in English
Tom Mann Theatre
136 Chalmers St, Surry Hills (near Central Station)
7pm Saturday 10 November 2012
2pm Sunday 11 November 2012
Wentworth Falls School of Arts
217 Great Western Highway, Wentworth Falls (near station)
7pm Saturday 17 November 2012
2pm Sunday 18 November 2012
Tickets available online and at the door $30/$22 concession
http://www.antipodeanopera.com.au
Director: Vincenzo Nesci
Assistant director: Tony Guyot
Conductor: Aldo Fedel
Lighting designer: Shaun Davies
Stage manager: Cameron Malcher
Wardrobe: Julie Campbell
Program: Sheila Choi
Web site: Daniel Kaan
Pianists: Tony Baldwin, Estella Roch
Rehearsal pianist: Rosalind But
Mountain Opera Chorus Master: Ron Goldsmith
Violetta: Grace Ciano (10th & 18th), Lyndall Rees (11th & 17th)
Alfredo: Daniel Kaan (11th & 17th), Orazio Paola (10th & 18th)
Germont: Jonathan Carlile
Flora: Elizabeth Hylton
Anina: Sarah Malcher
Baron: Rick Asensio
Gaston: Tony Guyot (11th & 18th), Siridev Abeyewardene (10th & 17th)
Doctor: Robert Rundle
Dancer: Masami Fox
About Antipodean Opera:
The Antipodean Opera is a not-for-profit co-operative company dedicated to bringing popular operas to audiences around Australia. We pride ourselves in the classical traditions of proven repertoire, beautiful singing and well considered interpretation.
For more information contact:
info@antipodeanopera.com.au
www.antipodeanopera.com.au
Posted in Performance dates
By Cameron Malcher
Before you read the rest of this review, click here and buy a ticket to one of the remaining shows of Hotel Hibiscus.
Got your ticket?
Good.
Produced by Epicentre Theatre Co, ‘Hotel Hibiscus’ is a play that taps into the Australian theatre tradition of exploring uncomfortable and unspoken issues through storytelling. In style and presentation, it is an old school drama, as the characters, their motivations and secrets get peeled away layer by layer, creating a building tension as revelation after revelation reveal the turbulent intrigue bubbling away underneath a calm facade.
The story is a dramatisation of Australia’s involvement in the six-year ‘dirty war’ on Bougainville, fictionalised in the play as the island of Hibiscus. The story centres around Colonel Baulkham, an Australian diplomat responsible for overseeing the signing of a peace treaty between the local army and a group of rebel fighters.
The rebels are fighting both the army and the Mantis mining company that has been poisoning the land with their mining operations. Like Hibiscus Island, Mantis is a fictional representation of the very real Rio Tinto.
This play shines a spotlight on the unpleasant underside of our society, and the often unacknowledged human cost of the ways that governments and corporations go about the business of securing resources to support our western lifestyle. It was written by Robert Cockburn who, as a journalist, reported on the ‘dirty war’ some 20 years ago, and who claims in the programme that this play has sat dormant for 15 years following an initial workshopping process. Cockburn offers no pretence about the political agenda of this play, pointing the finger at global silence and inaction over similar events in Syria, and the fact that the events that inspired this story have only recently been given the chance for a hearing of court under charges of genocide and war crimes. As such, each of the characters of this play has a distinct story to tell and represents a different player in the war.
As Colonel Christopher Baulkham, Dominic McDonald delivers another powerful performance, coming from his recent stint as Prospero in the Sydney Fringe’s Steampunk version of ‘The Tempest’, this time portraying the man who represents Australia’s less-than-honest interests in the war. Opposite him is Sopa Enri as Major Leon Ramara, the brutal leader of the local armed forces whose violent suppression of the rebels is spoken of with dread. In Enri’s hands, Major Ramara is a figure of menace and unpredictable violence. Caught between them is Sampson Makali, played by Mandela Mathia, the human face of the victims of the war, whose murder opens the show and is the mystery around which the story is built. Also of note is Dr. Patty Carmichael, played ably by Amanda Jermyn, who, in some ways, comes to represent our collective silence on these issues.
Don’t go to see this play expecting a perfectly polished production. It isn’t, and some aspects of the production require a pretty active suspension of disbelief.
Don’t go to see this play expecting to see flawless storytelling. While a powerful story told through believable characters, There is still some room for further workshopping and revision.
Don’t go to see this play expecting a night of passive entertainment. If you understand the story and the implications of the events on stage, you will likely leave the theatre feeling very confronted.
Do, however, go and see this play to see an original and powerful Australian work with a story and message that casts a questioning light not only on the specifics of the Bougainville war, but on the many issues of government, corporate and societal complicity in mass-violence that are very much a part of the world we live in today, and on the victims of that violence who too often go unnamed and unremembered.
Epicentre Theatre Company are to be congratulated for bringing this play to the stage for the first time, and I sincerely hope that this play has a long future ahead of it.
There are four shows of ‘Hotel Hibiscus’ remaining from 25 to 27 October, at the Zenith Theatre in Chatswood. Go and see it.
Posted in Epicentre Theatre Company, Performance dates, Reviews
DANCE BITES 2012
PRIME: ORDERLY
THURSDAY 25TH OCTOBER TO SATURDAY 27TH OCTOBER
AT RIVERSIDE
BOOKINGS HERE
Support Dean Walsh’s Crowd Funding campaign
http://www.indiegogo.com/primeorderly?a=1426152
Posted in Performance dates
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Posted in Performance dates
Posted in Performance dates
Tagged Les miserable, parramatta, riverside lyric ensemble, riverside theatres
Blacktown RSL Proudly Presents:
DISNEY’S HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL ONSTAGE
A Blacktown Theatre Company Production
Get ya head in the game and come out to Blacktown to see this energetic spectacular!
Performance Dates:
September
Friday 28th – 8pm
Saturday 29th – 2pm & 8pm
Sunday 30th – 2pm
October
Wednesday 3rd – 8pm
Friday 5th – 8pm
Saturday 6th – 2pm & 8pm
Venue:
Fifth Avenue Theatre
Blacktown Boys and Girls High Schools
Fifth Avenue, Blacktown NSW 2148
Tickets:
Adult $30.00
Concession $25.00
Online Bookings:
https://btco.iwannaticket.com.au
Phone Bookings:
John 0432 477 777
WORLD PREMIERE: THE HOTEL HIBISCUS BY ROBERT COCKBURN ZENITH THEATRE, CHATSWOOD 19-27 OCTOBER
Who would believe that the Australian Government had an involvement in the death of 15,000 innocent people? Robert Cockburn’s The Hotel Hibiscus is an Australian political thriller that questions our complicity and silence in a war crime that occurred just 20 years ago.
Sent secretly to a Pacific island off Papua New Guinea to run a dirty war for an Australian gold mine, Colonel Chris Baulkham falls in love with Dr Patty Carmichael, a 30 year-old academic woman whom he fools into providing his cover.
As Patty clears up her late father’s hotel, the Colonel is cleaning up the war crimes of his foreign minister’s failed war. Colonel Baulkham plays the puppeteer, juggling his and Patty’s worlds as she and her staff risk their lives unknowingly in aid of his work. Politics becomes dangerously personal and the strings begin to tangle as Patty uncovers the inconceivable truth.
The play was inspired by conflict in the 1990s surrounding the control of an Australian mine on Papua New Guinea’s Bougainville Island, in which an astonishing 15,000 civilians – or nearly 10% of the population – were killed. By uncovering the misuse of soldiers for political and corporate greed, Cockburn’s work reveals how decent people can become complicit in crimes against humanity.
Robert Cockburn reported on this conflict for The Times, the BBC, the ABC and to Amnesty International after investigating the army’s murder of a young bus driver. Hauntingly, within weeks of Epicentre’s decision to perform the play, the United States Supreme Court gave survivors of the conflict in Bougainville permission to bring an unprecedented action for ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ against mining giant Rio Tinto Zinc.
As The Hotel Hibiscus goes on stage, difficult questions are being asked of RTZ and those in power in Australia who turned a blind eye to the people of Bougainville, choosing to stay silent while thousands died.
Hotel Hibiscus is directed by Greg Friend and stars Dominic McDonald, Amanda Jermyn, Billy McPherson, Colin Huxley, Sopa Enari, Charlotte Hazzard and Sudanese refugee Mandela Mathia in his stage debut.
Epicentre Theatre Company presents
THE HOTEL HIBISCUS by Robert Cockburn
18-27 October Zenith Theatre, Chatswood
Railway and McIntosh Streets Chatswood (near Chatswood Station)
Performances: Fri 19th 8pm, Sat 20th 8pm, Sun 21st 5pm, Thu 25th 8pm, Fri 26th 8pm, Sat 27th 2pm and 8pm.
Tickets $28 / $20 conc. Bookings ??? or online http://www.epicentretheatre.org.au
Media: for more information, interviews, images, cast details etc, contact Geoff Sirmai
Watchdog Communications (02) 9345 0360 mob: 0412 669 272 geoff@watchdog.com.au
Rossini’s comic opera The Silken Ladder.
Sydney Independent Opera’s 2012 season continues with two performances of one of Rossini’s early gems: The Silken Ladder. This work is one of five comedies that Rossini wrote to establish his credentials: one-act operas with a small cast, no chorus and a light plot anchored by romantic misunderstanding. The Silken Ladder is a ‘French farce’, complete with an over-protective guardian and lovers hiding behind room dividers and racing up and down the ladder of silk that grants access to the leading lady’s bedroom.
The plot revolves around Julia and Dorville who have secretly married against her aunt’s wishes, and who only get together at midnight when he climbs the ladder. It is a situation thrown into turmoil with the arrival of the suave suitor Blansac chosen by Julia’s aunt Montdor and Julia attempts to get out of her predicament by encouraging Blansac to fall in love with her cousin Lucille. Miscommunications and misunderstandings abound as characters fall into and out of closets until Montdor discovers the silken ladder and demands an explanation. The Silken Ladder is full of Rossini’s youthful musical exhuberance with wonderfully embellished melodies and brilliant orchestral writing.
Sydney Independent Opera’s production of Rossini’s The Silken Ladder is directed by Sharna Galvin and conducted by Steven Stanke and stars Regina Daniel as Julia, Michaela Liesk as Lucille, Whitney Poulsen as Montdor, Raphael Hudson as the suave Blansac, David Visentin as Dorville and Randall Stewart as Sebastian.
Sydney Independent Opera is a chamber group specializing in operas sung in English with chamber orchestra. Rossini’s The Silken Ladder will be staged at the Independent Theatre, Miller St, North Sydney on Friday 21 September (8pm) and Saturday 22 September (8pm). Bookings through the theatre, theindependent.org.au/whats-on/ or ph 1300 302 604.
Dr Steven Stanke – Artistic Director
Posted in Performance dates
Theatre Junkies! 