Belvoir Season 2018

Belvoir has announced the productions making up their 2018 season.

“One of the shows we’re doing this year was written in 1958 by an 18-year-old called Shelagh Delaney,” says Artistic Director Eamon Flack. “Her play is set in a crumby Midlands tenement house, much like Delaney’s own. In this damp house, right there in the kitchen, and in the midst of their snotty lives (mother and daughter constantly have colds), is a jazz band. It’s a very upbeat kind of downbeat life she’s putting before us. Even in bleakness, Delaney’s saying, there’s an irrepressible zing of life. It’s such a marvellous view of things.

“That’s what our season aims to be. The jazz band in the mess. The mess being the world. You could despair, really, at the
state of affairs. These are mad, crazy times. So much shiny, high-end living on the one
hand, so much hate and misery on the other. The world has become incomprehensible. Only dangerous morons claim to have The Answers. The only answer, really, is to struggle on and fight for the good things. Either way, in the midst of this mess everyone has a life that wants to be lived. That’s the spirit of Delaney’s play, and it’s the spirit of our season.

“So here it is – a mix of comedy and tragedy, of the old and
the new, and sometimes all at once. There are serious themes in there – about change, about what we want to leave behind and what we want to hold on to. But more than anything it is playfulness – the best human instinct of them all – jazz-like, upbeat, free-spirited – which is the tune we’re dancing to in 2018.”

Kicking off the 2018 Season in partnership with the Sydney Festival will be the return of Jimi Bani (Title and Deed, ABC’s Mabo) in My Name is Jimi. Commissioned by Wesley Enoch and the Queensland Theatre, the show looks at the passing of culture from one generation to the next in an evening of music, dance, stand- up and storytelling. Four generationsof one family take to the stage, as Jimi’s grandmother, mother, son and brothers help him spin yarns of totems, traditions and childhood memories.

Single Asian Female will head to Belvoir in March, direct from its debut season at Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre Company. Sassy, fierce and uproariously funny, the show is an incisive new Chinese-Australian family comedy from comedian, actor and filthy tweeter, Michelle Law (The Family Law), and is a look at modern Australian domesticity like never seen before.

In Sami in Paradise (opening upstairs in April), Belvoir will present a fresh new take on the 1928 comedy, The Suicide by Nikolai Erdman, transplanted from the obliterating regime of Stalin’s Russia to the obliterating regime of living stateless in the world today. Directed by Belvoir Artistic Director, Eamon Flack, this is a play that is full of slapstick, exuberance, and the zing of being alive.

May will see the premiere of The Sugar House by award-winning Australian playwright Alana Valentine, presented upstairs at the Theatre. Starring Kris McQuade (Neighbourhood Watch, Strange Interlude), The Sugar House is a story of Sydney – work and corruption, family and massive social change. A story of how Australia went from working class to middle class set in the back streets of Pyrmont.

BLISS, a co-production with Malthouse Theatre is a brand-new stage adaptation of Peter Carey’s iconic Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Tom Wright. Entertaining and a little bit epic, it investigates if Australia Heaven on earth, or is it Hell?

Headed to Belvoir St Theatre in July is A Taste of Honey, a Vaudeville meets kitchen sink production of the 20th century play written by the then 19-year-old Shelagh Delaney. A Taste of Honey is directed by Eamon Flack and stars Genevieve Lemon.

August will see Virginia Gay (TV’s All Saints, Winners and Losers, High Society) in Calamity Jane following its premiere season at the Hayes Theatre. The show is given a hell of a shake-up in this pared-back, madcap, hilarious rendition. Jane is all swagger – a rough rider, full of defiance but, when it comes to love, she is calamity in more ways than one.

In An Enemy of the People (opening October), Ibsen’s 1882 masterpiece has been updated by Melissa Reeves. The production reunites the team behind Medea and Jasper Jones, with director Anne-Louise Sarks (Seventeen and Stories I Want to Tell You in Person) and starring the superb Kate Mulvany (Richard III) as Katherine Stockmann, who finds herself shunned from society when she speaks inconvenient environmental truths

Rounding out the season, Judy Davis will direct Colin Friels, Pamela Rabe and Toby Schmitz in The Dance of Death. Deliciously venomous, this is a masterpiece portrayal of a crumbling marriage, laced with black comedy and humour.

Belvoir Artistic Director, Eamon Flack said “You could despair, really, at the state of affairs. These are mad, crazy times. So much shiny, high-end living on the one hand, so much hate and misery on the other. The world has become incomprehensible. The only answer, really, is to struggle on and fight for the good things. Either way, in the midst of this mess everyone has a life that wants to be lived. That’s the spirit of our season.

“There are serious themes in there – about change, about what we want to leave behind and what we want to hold on to. But more than anything it is playfulness – the best human instinct of them all – jazz-like, upbeat, free- spirited – which is the tune.” 

belvoir.com.au