Category: Ensemble Theatre

Photo by Prudence Upton Ensemble present NEVILLE’S ISLAND, by Tim Firth, at the Ensemble Theatre, McDougall St, Kirribilli. 29 June – 12 August. Four middle-aged men on a community/business bonding excursion are wrecked on the rocks of an island, are stranded and out of network contact. Each man with a hidden ‘psychic’ break lurking just below their consciousness, under the duress of this isolation and their relatively inept ability to adapt to the challenges, disintegrate into a bourgeois (and superficial) ‘Lord of the Flies’ scenario. The conceit of this work is that it is filtered through the ‘mask of comedy’ with…

From the 1999 biography: Edward Albee – Singular Journey, by Mel Gussow: (the scene is] the living room of a house on the campus of a small New England college.” Act One: the Fun and Games begin. “Set in darkness. Crash against front door. MARTHA’s laughter heard. Front door opens, lights are switched on. MARTHA enters, followed by GEORGE.” Martha is “a large, boisterous woman, 52, looking somewhat younger. Ample, but not fleshy.” George, “her husband, 46. Thin; hair going gray. Uta Hagen, as Martha, delivered the first words of the play, “Jesus H. Christ,” followed by laughter from the…

  Ensemble Theatre present the World Premiere of THE RASPUTIN AFFAIR, by Kate Mulvany, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 1 April – 30 April. THE RASPUTIN AFFAIR is a new Australian play by Kate Mulvany. The play is concerned with the assassination, in December, 1916, of Rasputin, a Russian peasant, semi-literate monk and mystic, who exercised extraordinary power over the last of the ruling Romanoff family: Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra. There is a note in the program: Although this play is based on true people and events, some events and characters in this play have been fictionalised…

Ensemble Theatre presents TWO, by Jim Cartwright, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 24 March – 6 May. TWO is play by Jim Cartwright written in 1989. It is a play for two actors playing fourteen characters. TWO, like Mr Cartwright’s first and famous play, ROAD (1986), comes from his identity and personal ownership of the private dilemmas of his community, focusing on the marginalised and disenfranchised. He was born in Farnsworth, Lancashire, and has lived in that ‘Northern’ area all his life. TWO, reflects the Northern community coping with the government of Margaret Thatcher and its effects on local industry…

  Ensemble Theatre presents ODD MAN OUT, by David Williamson, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 19 January – 18 March. ODD MAN OUT, is a new Australian play, by David Williamson. The play explores a relationship between Ryan (Justin Stewart Cotta), a ‘numbers’ genius employed and paid well by a Big Bank for his skills, who suffers from an undiagnosed case of Aspergers’ Syndrome and Alice (Lisa Gormley) a 38 year old physical therapist counting down her fertility clock with some urgency. We watch Ryan and Alice meet on a bus (what he is doing on bus, with all his…

  Ensemble Theatre presents BETRAYAL, by Harold Pinter, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 16 July – 20 August. BETRAYAL, by Harold Pinter was written in 1978, and belongs to his great middle period, and along with other works like NO MAN’S LAND (1975) and OLD TIMES , is often characterised as one of his ‘memory plays’. Pinter was given the Nobel prize for Literature in 2005. This play uses reverse chronology, and so the first scene of the play is the chronological end of the story, the last scene of the play is the first chronological event. It begins in a…