Overview
Griffin Theatre is out to reinforce its reputation as the incubator for new work in Sydney with a fully Australian 2013 season that includes the first writer/director team to emerge from the company's Studio residency program.
The pairing is Duncan Graham, the playwright behind 2011's bewildering and spooky monologue Cut, and director Tanya Goldberg (Way to Heaven), who'll be kicking off the Main Season with their new urban thriller, Dreams in White. Also in the season is Melissa Bubnic's 2011 Patrick White Playwrights' Award-winning Beached, about a morbidly obese boy being followed by a reality TV crew, and Van Badham's new The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars, a mythically charged subversion of the rom-com.
In what's become an anticipated tradition under artistic director Sam Strong, following on from Speaking in Tongues and The Boys, one play from the annals of SBW Stables history will be revived. In 2013 it's John Romeril's The Floating World, a cruiseship-set story of xenophobia and the legacy of war last seen on this stage in 1975.
There's equally thrilling stuff in the Independent Season, which includes the Tennessee Williams/Gone with the Wind/drag cabaret synthesis that shook up a suburban Melbourne shed (Sisters Grimm's Summertime in the Garden of Eden), a dreamy Lally Katz number that'll be hoping for a Sydney reincarnation in which it can spread its wings (Return to Earth), and the world premiere of Vivienne Walshe's poetic 2012 Griffin Award winner (This Is Where We Live).
"The plays all offer very different experiences," says Strong, "but they all do things you can only do in a theatre. More importantly, they do things you can only do in our theatre.”
This is the last season to be put together by Strong, who will pop back to direct The Floating World. His successor, Lee Lewis, will take on The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars, while other directing talent in the mix in 2013 includes Shannon Murphy, Paige Rattray, and Susanna Dowling.
Basically, this is a season where women are kicking arse all over the shop and there's still at least one play to which you can take your dad without complaints. Subscription packages (or, alternatively, a new membership option for the commitment-averse) are now available through the Griffin website.