By Giacomo Puccini. State Opera South Australia. Festival Theatre, Adelaide. November 14 – 23, 2019
Madama Butterfly is perhaps Giacomo Puccini’s most famous opera. Produced all over the world, it remains a favourite for performers and audiences alike.
State Opera SA’s production originated in Seattle and was brought to Australia by Stuart Maunder and directed by its creator Kate Cherry.
By Joseph Zettelmaier. Centenary Theatre Group. Chelmer Community Centre. 9-30 November 2019
Not even fans of the film Pulp Fiction – which famously plays around with the sequence of time – will be able to guess the extraordinary events in the denouement of Joseph Zettelmaier’s PULP.
By Jeffrey Archer. St Jude’s Players. November 14-23rd, 2019
Best known for his fast-moving, critically acclaimed thriller novels, Jeffrey Archer has written three plays, two of which have a courtroom setting, both actively involving the audience in deciding innocence or guilt. Beyond Reasonable Doubt is the first, having had a lengthy London run and countless world-wide performances since.
Music: Frank Wildhorn. Lyrics: Don Black. Book: Ivan Menchell. Beenleigh Theatre Group, Beenleigh, Qld. Director: Kaitlyn Carlton. Musical Director: Julie Whiting 15-30 November 2019
Beenleigh has been in the grip of Frank Wildhorn fever. No sooner had Phoenix Ensemble concluded their production of Jekyll & Hyde, than Beenleigh Theatre Group opened their Bonnie & Clyde. Despite closing quickly on Broadway in 2011, the show has since gone onto international success around the world.
Adapted by Patrick Barlow, from Charles Dickens. Adelaide Repertory Theatre. Arts Theatre Angas St. November 14-23, 2019
What the Dickens is going on at the Arts Theatre you ask? Dozens of people exiting happy and joyful, full of Christmas cheer? It’s the Adelaide Repertory Theatre Company’s absolute (Christmas) cracker of a show A Christmas Carol.
By Jessica Swale. Castle Hill Players. Pavilion Theatre, Castle Hill Showgrounds. Nov 15 – Dec 7, 2019.
Theatre stages see many transformations, but surely there are few more different than that which has occurred at the Pavilion Theatre over the past few weeks. From Anne Frank’s crowded, dimly lit garret in war-time Amsterdam, it is transformed to 17th century England and the reign of the “Merry Monarch”, King Charles II.
By Patricia Cornelius, Tes Lyssiotis, Sahra Davoudi, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Reeves, Milad Norouzi, Wahibe Moussa. Directed by Irine Vela. Outer Urban Projects & La Mama. La Mama Courthouse, Carlton. 13 – 24 November 2019
Life as an audition. Please hire me, please give me the role, please like me, please accept me, please see me as I am, please acknowledge my experience, please allow me to enter your country, please recognise me as a genuine refugee…
By Federico García Lorca. Foul Play Theatre. RUMPUS, 100 Sixth St Bowden, Adelaide. November 8 – 23, 2019
Federico García Lorca premiered his controversial play Yerma in 1934 when it mightily challenged the institution of Catholicism and the strict sexual mores of Spanish society. He describes his work as ‘a tragic poem’ and playwright Holly Brindley certainly maintains a poetic lexicon in this adaptation for Foul Play as part of RUMPUS’ inaugural 2019 Adelaide season.
By Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe, and Phillip Scott. Sydney Theatre Company. Directed by Jonathan Biggins and Drew Forsythe. The Playhouse, Canberra. Tuesday 12 November – Saturday 23 November, and touring.
The Wharf Revue is always good for an evening’s laughing appreciation of cleverness at the expense of any politician self-important enough and loud enough to deserve it and one or two others who will forever remain engraved upon our memories, and it has returned to Canberra in 2019 in its latest incarnation, The Wharf Revue: UNR–DACT–D.
Book by James Lapine; Music & Lyrics by William Finn. New Theatre, Sydney. Director: Deborah Jones. 12 November - 14 December 2019
Christmas comes early to Newtown as the New Theatre presents the Sydney premiere of this delightful small-scale musical. Based on the 2006 movie that gave Toni Collette her break into Hollywood, Little Miss Sunshine covers an 800-mile family road trip to California where Olive, the youngest member, can compete in a beauty pageant and be ‘the first Miss America from New Mexico’.
