Community Theatre

Jon English frocks up as Enda Turnbald in Packemin Productions’ production of Hairspray at Parramatta’s  Riverside Theatre from July 26, partnered with Helpmann Award nominated Wayne Scott Kermond as Wilbur, while Cle Morgan will also be reprising the role of Motormouth Maybelle which she played in the original Australian production.

The trio of professionals will share the stage with some of Sydney’s best community theatre performers.

In the manner of British farces, the story-line of Alan Ayckbourn’s Bedroom Farce is manic.

Ernest and Delia go out to dinner to celebrate their wedding anniversary. When this is a failure they return home and prepare to celebrate with pilchards on toast in bed.

Malcolm and Kate are preparing a house-warming party:  Nick and Jan have been invited to this but Nick has hurt his back and prepares to rest quietly in bed.

In Calendar Girls, playing at Limelight Theatre (WA) during August, members of the local Women’s Institute in Yorkshire (similar to Australia’s Country Women’s Association) decide to make a nude calendar to raise funds for the local hospital after one of their husbands dies from leukaemia.

Based on a true story, Calendar Girls  was originally an award-winning 2003 film with Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, before Tim Firth adapted it for the stage in 2008.

A classic Aussie rock musical is being updated by a young theatre company in Sydney for a July season.

Boy’s Own Mcbeth by Grahame (Aunty Jack) Bond and Jim Burnett toured Australia for two years back in the early 1980s and even had an outing in Los Angeles.

The star is Terry Shakespeare. He really is the school old boy. At 32 he’s been in year 12 for 16 years and his two children Dopey and SS are in the same class. But he’s not silly - it’s all a tax dodge.