Overview
Melbourne Theatre Company have announced their 2014 program, revealing a season generous to new voices and local independent companies as well as a smattering of exciting Australian premieres. The year will also include the MTC's first choreographical collaboration and a new staged reading series.
Between May and August the Neon Festival of Independent Theatre will once more welcome new independents to the Lawler, this time featuring Antechamber Productions & Daniel Keene, Sans Hotel and Arthur (currently playing Return to Earth at Sydney's Griffin), Little Ones Theatre (Salome) and Angus Cerini/Doubletap.
Artistic director Brett Sheehy says, “We hope audiences will again be delighted by the imagination, inventiveness and diversity on offer from these five new companies in 2014." It's with the same broadening beyond the mainstage in mind that sees MTC literary director Chris Mead team up with the Cybec Foundation to produce Cybec Electric, a showcase of works from five new Australian playwrights.
John Tiffany introduces Australian audiences to the Tony Award-winning Once, Enda Walsh's wildly successful musical adaptation of John Carney's low-budget, unbelievably charming 2007 film — a must-see for anyone who fell under the spell of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglova’s music. The oh-so-exciting Leticia Cáceres (Constellations, The Dark Room) directs a very modern love triangle in Cock, a sharp three-hander exploring sex, love and confusion written by the UK's Mike Bartlett. Cáceres will also direct Sigrid Thornton in The Effect by Lucy Prebble of Enron fame. Miriam Margolyes brings her charismatic comic skills to I’ll Eat you Last by John Logan (Red), a one-woman show allowing us into the juicy world of infamous Hollywood agent Sue Mengers.
Plays from Aussie writers include the world premiere of Brendan Cowell's Sublime starring Josh McConville (think modern masculinity, sport and sex scandals) and The Speechmaker, a political satire marking the playwriting debut of Melbourne comedic geniuses Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Rob Sitch of Working Dog (with MTC associate director Sam Strong directing). Joanna Murray-Smith, Bernadette Robinson and Simon Phillips follow up their Songs for Nobodies success with new musical work Pennsylvania Avenue, directed by former MTC artistic director Simon Phillips and starring the transformative Bernadette Robinson. Simon Stone teams up again with Robin Nevin, bringing the Belvoir production of Lally Katz's Neighbourhood Watch to Melbourne for the first time.
An exciting add-on co-production is Complexity of Belonging, the collaboration between Chunky Move's choreographer Anouk van Dijk and German writer Falk Richter. Actors, dancers, text and movement combine in an interrogation of our modern identity.
Of course, there are some classics alongside all the brand-spanking new work, including the season opener Private Lives. It should prove interesting to compare Sam Strong’s take on the elegantly naughty wit of Coward to last year’s Belvoir show. Gale Edwards brings her decades of expertise to Ibsen’s dark and secret-laden Ghosts, performed by Philip Quast, Pip Edwards and Richard Piper. Also up is the fast-talking, greed-fuelled man’s world of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross starring Alex Dimitriades and directed by Melbourne filmmaker Alkinos Tsilimidos.
For more details and to book subscription packages, visit the Melbourne Theatre Company website.