Category: Company B

    Company B present THE PROMISE. Original play by Alexi Arbuzov. New Version by Nick Dear. Based on the translation by Ariadne Nicolaeff. At the Belvoir Theatre. THE PROMISE by Alexi Arbuzov was first published in 1965 and had an English stage production in November, 1966 at the Oxford Playhouse transferring into London the following year. The cast was a stellar young company; Judi Dench, Ian McShane, Ian McKellen. Mr McKellen (as Leonidik) won Most Promising New Actor for the performance. “Ancient” history, but indicates one of the reasons to do this play. It covers some Russian History, beginning…

Photo: Toby Schmitz – Ruben Guthrie Company B present RUBEN GUTHRIE by Brendan Cowell at the Belvoir Theatre. Presented last year as part of the B Sharp Season Downstairs this play has had some re-working, new writing and some re-casting. Wayne Blair’s production has got deeper, darker and more pertinent. Alcoholism and addiction is the thematic subject. In my own neighbourhoods of suburban Sydney and the inner city, the cultural trauma of alcohol abuse, (binge drinking, just one of the symptoms) is almost unavoidable. The consequences both individually and in the wider community are ugly and on the edge of…

  Company B presents BAGHDAD WEDDING written by Hassan Abdulrazzak at the Belvoir St Theatre. BAGHDAD WEDING is Hassan Abdulrazzak’s first play and it was first performed at Soho Theatre, London, in June 2007. Mr Abdulrazzak holds a PhD in Molecular Biology and works as a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College. He has, since this play, also worked for the Royal Court in translation of an Israeli play (603 by Imad Farajin) and is on attachment with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). I mention Mr Abdulrazzak’s background because part of the fascination of this text and production, for…

    Company B presents the Ridiculusmus production TOUGH TIME, NICE TIME, written by Jon Haynes and David Woods at Belvoir Theatre. There is a blackened stage with just a lit bathtub in the centre. The lights go down. I can see two men, in the dark, wrapped in white towels, enter, and sit in the small tub. The lights come back up. Two men sitting in a bath, supposedly in a bath house, maybe in Bangkok, tell each other stories. The stories may be factual, they maybe distilled from film, fiction. The men maybe naked in the tub. There…

This play is the story of Yibiyung, a young Indigenous girl at the turn of the last century living in Western Australia under the increasing control of laws and policies concerning Indigenous affairs under a government appointed officer called the Chief Protector of Aborigines, who was made under the 1905 Aborigines Act “the legal guardian” of all “aboriginal” and “half caste” children up to the age of 16 years, enabling him to send any “aboriginal” and “half caste” child to an orphanage, mission, or industrial school, with or without the child’s parents’ permission. This story sounds very familiar. It should,…

I read this play maybe nine months ago. It is so beautiful to read (in this magnificent translation). I shall quote some excerpts… “I have a baby in my belly. Wahab! My belly is full of you. My belly is full of you. You see? Isn’t it amazing? It’s magnificent and horrible, isn’t it? It’s an abyss. And it’s like freedom to wild birds, isn’t it? And there are no more words. Just the wind! I have a child in my belly. When I heard Elhame tell me, an ocean exploded in my head. Seared.” Some more : “I’m leaving,…