Ordinary Days in Wollongong

For the final show of their 2024 season, Wollongong Workshop Theatre is presenting Adam Gwon’s heartwarming and poignant musical, Ordinary Days.

Ordinary Days is a refreshingly honest and funny musical about making real connections in the city that never sleeps (but probably should at some point). It tells the story of four New Yorkers whose lives cross over as they search for meaning, happiness, love and cabs. Ordinary Days is a captivating musical for anyone who's ever struggled to notice and appreciate the simple things in everyday life. With equal doses of humour and poignancy, it celebrates how over eight million individual stories interlace in unexpected ways to make New York City such a unique and remarkable city.

The cast of four characters includes Warren (Matthew Dorahy), a self-proclaimed 'pioneer of visual art' who works as a house sitter for a jailed graffiti artist. He spends his free time walking the streets of New York, attempting to promote his employer's work by handing out flyers to people who largely pretend he doesn't exist. When he meets Deb (Samantha Atkinson), a cynical and highly strung graduate student, he makes it his mission to show her that beauty can be found everywhere - we only need to slow down and notice it. While they don’t realise it, Warren and Deb briefly cross paths with Jason (Conor Healey-Green) and Claire (Michaela Hewitt). A hopeless romantic at heart, Jason is not a lover of the big city but has decided to make the best of it to be closer to his girlfriend Claire. The two have recently decided to move in together, and in the process of consolidating their belongings, Jason is puzzled by Claire's resistance to letting go of objects from her past. As Jason moves in, she is forced to confront items that remind her of her past, which she has shut off from both Jason and herself. Despite her best efforts to keep her past in the past, Jason's well-meaning attempts to connect with her threaten to bring Claire's carefully constructed internal barriers crumbling down.

The cast of four talented performers, some of whom are travelling from Sydney to Wollongong to be part of the show, are delighted to be bringing this tale to life. Samantha Atkinson, who plays Deb, is a fan of the music in the show, which has been likened to the work of Stephen Sondheim in speed and complexity.

“My favourite part of the show is the music. I think it’s beautiful how it all flows together and how the characters’ stories blend together musically. It's a really strong show with beautiful themes and stories, and I think it'll move a lot of people.”

Conor Healey-Green, who plays Jason, loves the simple but moving story.

"To my knowledge, Ordinary Days hasn’t been done in the Illawarra. It's very stripped back, it's raw, it's acoustic - it's just a piano and a simple story about four people in New York whose lives intertwine with each other. It’s lovely and powerful."

Ordinary Days opens at the Wollongong Workshop Theatre in Gwynneville on November 1^st and plays until November 17^th.  

Season November 1 – 17, 2024

Performances: 8pm Fridays and Saturdays / 2pm Saturdays and Sundays

Venue: Wollongong Workshop Theatre, 190 Gipps Road Gwynneville (behind the Senior Citizens Centre)

Tickets $30 / $25 concession

To book, visit https://www.wollongongworkshoptheatre.com.au