Category: New Theatre

GODS AND LITTLE FISHES, is a beautiful gem of a play that the writers control with unerring sensitivity. It is a play about Grief. Its narrative wrapping/content is the recall of a terrible set of circumstances of 1960 that disturbed the provincial blanket of protection that Sydney wore – perhaps, Australia, as well – when an ordinary, suburban Bondi family won the Sydney 0pera House Lottery of $100,000 – a fantasy dreamt by all of us a big cheer – only to have a stranger call on the telephone a month later with a demand of extortion in exchange for…

ANGRY FAGS, is an American play by Topher Payne, first appearing in 2015, to be re-written and achieve some very positive attention in 2017. This new version is what the New Theatre is presenting as their contribution to the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festivities. A friend of Bennett Riggs (Brynn Antony) and his room mate, Cooper Harlow (Lachie Pringle), has been bashed. In the state of Georgia, where they are living, there is no legislation regarding Hate Crime and despite protest from the community, the local Lesbian Senator, Allison Haines (Meg Shooter), does not feel it is appropriate to…

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is a musical adaptation, by James Lapine and William Finn, of the 2006 film, that won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Michael Arndt, with a stellar ensemble cast that included Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Paul Dano, Alan Arkin and introducing Abigail Breslin. The film became a ‘cult’ hit. The musical originated in San Diego, in California in 2011, and evolved later on Off-Broadway in 2013. James Lapine has written libretti for musicals: SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (1984), INTO THE WOODS (1987), FALSETTOS (1992), and PASSION (1994). William Finn’s most successful…

MY NIGHT WITH REG, by Kevin Elyot, in 1982, is a prize winning play that has often, still is, revived around the world. It is made up of three scenes in the apartment of Guy (John-Paul Santucci), a single gay man, and a group of friends who intermittently, but loyally meet up. Time wise it covers several years. Reg never appears in the play but has had an impressive set of relationships with nearly everybody else in the play. It is set in the times of the rise of the HIV epidemic, though no-one ever names that devastation. We gather…

Photo by Chris Lundie New Theatre presents, NELL GWYNN, by Jessica Swale, at the New Theatre, King St, Newtown. 8th August – 8th September. NELL GWYNN, is a British play by Jessica Swale. The play won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy in 2016. The play in a very large number of short scenes – it is in two acts and is almost three hours long – brings to life the career of Nell Gwynn (Bishanyia Vincent), a young woman who grew up in Cheapside experiencing the rough side of life with her ‘old Ma Gwynn’ (Susan Jordan) and…

This production of SILENT DISCO, by Lachlan Philpott is a revival. It was first presented in Sydney at the Griffin Theatre in 2011 in a production directed by Lee Lewis. Lachlan Philpott is an Australian playwright that, generally, talks of the community of the underprivileged underclass. In SILENT DISCO, the focus is on the story of Tamara (Gemma Scobie), an intelligent young adolescent handicapped by the surrounding environment of a ‘broken family’, and poverty, coping with a struggling school system, her ill single father, Laurence (Brendan Miles), and the hormones of middle teenage growth exploding in a doomed infatuation with…