(Poster artwork by Tara Hale)
Each performance will:
- Start at 7.30 on a Friday & Saturday night
- Start at 6pm on the first Sunday
- Start at 2pm on the second Sunday
- Be Auslan interpreted on the second Friday night of each season.
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Heroes by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Margaret Bell
Season – 9, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 29 and 30 March
“A play about camaraderie, hope and small acts of heroism”
Heroes is a 2005 translation into English and adaptation of the 2003 French play Le Vent Des Peupliers by Gérald Sibleyras.
Tom Stoppard’s contribution is of course his magnificent wit and choice of scintillating language.” – Curtain Up Review
“Hilarious and moving…achingly funny and piercingly sad.” – The Daily Telegraph
Gustave, Philippe, and Henri – war heroes, all – are plotting an escape. They’ve had enough of the tortures of their confinement: dictatorial captors, untrustworthy fellow prisoners, and far too many birthday parties. Indeed, life in a retired soldiers’ home is almost unbearable! So, while keeping each other company on the back patio, they hatch a plan to escape to Indochina, or at least to a picnic under the poplars on a nearby hill. Winner of London’s prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of this French play is playful, bawdy, and heartbreakingly funny.
Silver Lining by Sandi Toksvig
Directed by Brian Hinselwood
Season – 11, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 31 May and 1 June
“Enjoy the ride with these diverse characters in their plight to beat the rising waters”.
How unbelievably dull my life was. I did everything I was supposed to. I was such a good girl. I lived in the house he chose and cleaned a dead woman’s furniture. I bought hats, who the hell wears a hat? And all the time I wanted to scream because I was so bored.
On one dark and stormy night in the upper day room of the Silver Retirement Home, five elderly women are trading stories of their remarkable (or sometimes unremarkable) lives. With the storm floods rising and no rescue team in sight, the ladies are faced with the sudden realisation that in order to survive they are going to have to do what they have done for their entire lives – do it themselves!
Silver Lining is a hilarious comedy by Sandi Toksvig. It tells the tale of a group of extraordinary yet forgotten women, who come together one treacherous night to recreate The Great Escape – senior-citizen style.
Don’t Get your Vicars in a Twist by Lesley Bown and Ann Gawthorpe
Directed by William McCreery-Rye
Season – 20, 26, 27 and 28 July, 2, 3, 4, 9 and 10 August
A fast-moving farce full of fun, frolics and lots of doors.
Desperate to find funds to pay for his daughter’s wedding, church warden George Williams (actor Greg Seckold) seizes the opportunity to rent out the vicarage while waiting for a new vicar to be appointed. The booking is taken by a touring company, which is set to stage a murder mystery weekend in which a female vicar and a bishop are among the cast of eleven.
It is a hilarious farce about Church Warden George Williams, who rents out what was believed to be the empty vicarage, to a travelling drama company for a Murder Mystery weekend, all to pay for his daughters wedding! Rev. Caroline is one of the first women to be appointed as a Vicar in the church, much to the consternation of some. The chaos mounts when the new Vicar, the actors, the guests and the Anglican Bishop appear at the vicarage at the same time! George is determined to keep the Murder Mystery going and resorts to all sorts of antics to manage the situation.
Mr. Bailey’s Minder by Debra Oswald
Directed by Janine Francis
Season – 14, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28 and 29 September, 4 and 5 October
“A deeply moving piece about friendship, ego, art and the secret longing for a better life.”
Leo Bailey is one of Australia’s greatest living artists, whose genius battles to survive the effects of alcohol, cynicism and self-loathing.
Only one of his many children, his daughter Margo, is prepared to help, but she does so at arm’s length. Margo finds a live-in-minder, Therese who is fresh out of prison and desperate for a home. Then along comes Karl, a handyman who has the job of removing a valuable mural but who keeps returning with offers of practical friendship.
Pulp by Joseph Zettelmaier
Directed by Cam Castles
9, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 29 and 30 November.
“A genre bending literary noir comedy”
Los Angeles, 1933. PI Frank Ellery doesn’t know it, but he’s taken on the strangest case of his life. A literary agent has been gruesomely murdered. The four suspects: his remaining clients, all writers for different pulp magazines. Frank dives into the mystery, and his world turns upside down as life begins to imitate literature. Science fiction, romance, adventure, horror … and one down-on-his-luck gumshoe who’s about to learn what really lurks between the lines.
