Category: Sydney Theatre Company

Sydney Theatre Company and Allens present TRAVELLING NORTH by David Williamson at Wharf 1, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay. David Wiiliamson’s TRAVELLING NORTH was first performed at the Nimrod Theatre, Sydney, in August, 1979, directed by John Bell. This play was the ninth in an output that had established David Williamson as the most prolific and ‘bankable’ writer that the Australian theatre had ever produced: THE REMOVALISTS (1971), DON’S PARTY(1971), THE DEPARTMENT (1975), THE CLUB (1977), amongst others, were proof of that last claim. To produce a David Willliamson play was to virtually ensure a good box office return – money in…

WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett is regarded as one of the most important plays of the last century. Here is a little history: Samuel Beckett was born in 1906, in Dublin. He was educated at Trinity in Dublin, majoring in French and Italian, graduating with a BA in 1927, and an MA in 1931. He taught English in Paris and became, intimately, acquainted with James Joyce and his circle, sometimes, even reading aloud for Joyce, as Joyce’s sight failed him. In 1938, he published a novel MURPHY (written in English). He stayed in Paris after war was declared in…

Sydney Theatre Company presents a Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia production of VERE [FAITH] by John Doyle in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. VERE [FAITH] is John Doyle’s second play, THE PIG IRON PEOPLE, which the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) presented in 2008, being the first. Says Andrew Upton, the Artistic Director of the STC: John Doyle … has shaped a play that finds the intersection between theatre, science and morality. The here and now of the stage, the four-dimensional fields and particles of physics, the slippages and illusions of dementia. It…

Sydney Theatre Company presents MACHINAL by Sophie Treadwell in Wharf 2 , Hickson Road.   Machinal, the play by Sophie Treadwell, was first produced on Broadway in 1928. Ms Treadwell was an investigative journalist and writer. This play was inspired, loosely based, on an actual murder case celebre of the period, that of Ruth Snyder. Ruth Snyder was convicted for the murder of her husband, and along with her lover, was executed at Sing Sing Prison – she was the first woman to be executed in the electric chair, since 1899. The case was a newspaper sensation and became historically infamous…

Sydney Theatre Company presents The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of ROMEO AND JULIET by William Shakespeare in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. Kip Williams, the Director of this production of ROMEO AND JULIET, tells us in his program note: … When I came to reread ROMEO AND JULIET with a mind to direct it, I was struck less by the differences between the Montagues and Capulets, and more by the similarities: excessive wealth, unchecked ego, dominant patriarchs, packs of arrogant young men. The ancient grudge between the families felt like it could easily be the kind…

Sydney Theatre Company and Barking Gecko Theatre Company present STORM BOY by Colin Thiele. Adapted for the stage by Tom Holloway in Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company, Hickson Rd. STORM BOY is a joint production of the Sydney Theatre Company and the Perth company, Barking Gecko Theatre. Directed by John Sheedy from a commissioned adaptation by Tom Holloway, of the 1964 children’s novel by Colin Thiele. A film was made in 1976 by the South Australian Film Commission (SAFC) and Channel 7. It won the Best Film Award from the Australian Film Institute (AFI) in 1977, and starred Greg Rowe,…