Category: Heather Mitchell

PLAYING BEATIE BOW is a Young adult novel published by Ruth Park in 1980. Ruth Park died in 2010 at the age of 93. The book has had a staunch readership in its brief history and is a favourite for a few generations of young Australian readers. Both Kate Mulvany, the adapter of the novel for the theatre and the Director Kip Williams are two of those long affected readers, they declare in the program notes. I have never read the book even though I have had a long connection to most of Ruth Park’s work and so am discovering…

The ILLIAD – OUT LOUD, adapted from Homer’s poem, began as an ABC Radio Drama commission seven years ago. William Zappa, using seventeen translations – from that of Alexander Pope’s of 1720 to a more recent from Caroline Alexander – and advice from experts in this contentious field of study, has developed a three part preparation as an oral presentation. Its tradition is that of an oral poem (sung), not a literary work, stemming from, most experts believe, from the 8th Century BC. Zappa was determined to find the Australian voice for this telling – its musical rhythms and sounds,…

Photo by Daniel Boud Sydney Theatre Company presents, THE HARP IN THE SOUTH, by Ruth Park – Part One and Part Two, an Adaptation for the stage by Kate Mulvany, at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Hickson Rd, Miller’s Point. 16th August – 6th October. A HARP IN THE SOUTH, is a new Australian play in Two Parts, adapted by Kate Mulvany, from the books of Ruth Park: A HARP IN THE SOUTH (1948), POOR MAN’S ORANGE (1949) and a pre-quel to the earlier novels, a late-comer to the Darcy family history, MISSUS (1985). These books tell of an Irish/Australian family, the…

Sydney Theatre Company, presents CLOUD NINE, by Caryl Churchill, at Wharf 1, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay. 1 July – 12 August. Let us begin at the top. This is the BEST production I have seen at the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) for many a long year. Get your self a ticket ASAP. This production of CLOUD NINE, a play by Caryl Churchill, written in 1979, Directed for the STC by Kip Williams (their new Artistic Director), with Matthew Backer, Kate Box, Harry Greenwood, Anita Hegh, Josh McConville, Heather Mitchell and Anthony Taufa  – is an absolute “knock out”. To begin where…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents Noel Coward’s HAY FEVER, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, 11 April – 21 May, 2016. Noel Coward, at the age of 25, wrote and starred in THE VORTEX, opening in December in 1924, which settled into a long London run. Sheridan Morley tells us in his biography of Noel Coward, A TALENT TO AMUSE: On the principle that success breeds other successes, once THE VORTEX was an established hit both HAY FEVER and FALLEN ANGELS, which had previously been turned down by every management in London, went into rapid production; by…

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is one of those famous plays by a now famous writer, Tom Stoppard, that every young, university actor wants to be in, or do a scene from. In the early nineteen sixties, having the idea that the King of England to whom Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in Shakespeare’s HAMLET, were dispatched, was probably King Lear, Tom Stoppard wrote, whilst working in West Berlin, with several other writers on a Ford Foundation Award (as “cultural window dressing” for the allies!) a one-act comedy in verse called tentatively, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN MEET KING LEAR. A seed had been…