Times change, people grow older, and nothing lasts forever. Ray Lawler’s 1950s classic remains a mainstay of the Australian theatre repertoire for its dry-eyed portrayal of the end of the boom time. In this most recent reprisal, Barney, Roo, Olive, and Pearl serve as reminders of how thin the facade of endless growth is and the consequences of failing to see the reality underneath.
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Before Agatha Christie was a household name for crime fiction, she worked in hospital dispensaries, a profession that would later inform many of her future fictional poisonings. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Christie’s first published novel and one of the first books published by Penguin Books, features a mysterious poisoning that bridged the two realms of Christie’s careers in pharmacology and murder.
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A woman turns to the police for assistance when her husband assaults her. The police take the opportunity to puff their chests and wield their power. David Williamson’s the Removalists is exemplary of the playwright’s successes and shortcomings in a brutal, violent exploration of power and toxic masculinity.
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Being a teenager is brutal with the nagging parents, unstable friendships, and general boredom of school but it’s all heightened by the raging hormones and overwhelming pressure to figure yourself out as quickly as possible. Jonathan Harvey’s 1993 play is all about teenage angst but with the sparkling joys of love and understanding, too.
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Mary St is a perfectly ordinary suburban street with perfectly ordinary residents. The only thing missing is perhaps a bit of community spirit, the comfort of having someone keeping an eye on your business. But when two relative newbie neighbours strike up a friendship, the close quarters create more friction than expected.
Image by Craig O’Regan
Persuasion is often labeled the most romantic of Jane Austen’s novels for its mixture of love, regret, and a sense of destiny in the lead couple, much like more recently love stories like The Notebook or Always Be My Maybe. Two people fall in love but the circumstances drive them apart only for them to be reunited in the future when rekindle their young romance.
Image by Clare Hawley
The debut production at the new Sydney performance venue Limelight on Oxford, uses a comedic approach to death and grieving to investigate attitudes to euthanasia and how our relationships change, or stay the same, after death. This new Australian play uses farcical elements and touches of the supernatural to unravel the past and future of a family in mourning.
Night Writes 