Overview
With December hard upon us, Parramatta's Riverside Theatre has let a calendar year's worth of cats out of the bag. Their 2017 program kicks off on January 11 and doesn't pause for breath until early November. In other words, now's the time to familiarise yourself with the lineup because once the art starts flying, it'll be too late.
What Rhymes with Cars and Girls will see You Am I frontman Tim Rogers personally taking care of the soundtrack for a play loosely based on his album of the same name. Apparently it's about pizza and love. Erth's Prehistoric Aquarium will see masters of the visual spectacle, Erth, rustle up another gang of prehistoric lizard-giants to terrify and amaze anyone who's ever had a serious crack at pronouncing epidexipteryx's name.
Bram Stoker's gothic blood party Dracula has been revisited and adapted by Queensland theatre company shake and stir, ready to open eyes and veins. They're fresh from adapting Wuthering Heights and Roald Dahl's George's Marvellous Medicine. Queensland Theatre and Grin and Tonic Theatre Group will present Australian Indigenous theatre masterwork, The Seven Stages of Grieving.
Playwright Tommy Murphy of Holding the Man acclaim, turns his focus on the friendship (and internal organs) of Mary-Ellen Field, an Australian businesswoman and Mark Colvin, one of the ABC's most dogged radio journos, in Mark Colvin's Kidney (also showing at Belvoir in 2017). And Shaun Tan's gently bizarre book, The Red Tree, following a young girl tumbling through surrealistic landscapes, is given the theatre treatment. Expect divers on tricycles and dice that won't stop rolling.
That's just a taste of the Riverside 2017 program. Head to the website for the whole thing.
Image: Dylan Evans.