Cirrus@Austlit

'Theatrical wunderkinds Sisters Grimm, creators of the sell-out, award-winning NEON Festival hit The Sovereign Wife, take audiences on an epic, genre-defying journey.

'When a young wild girl is captured in the rainforests of Borneo, all of Holland is set abuzz. The year is 1861, and pioneering neuroscientist Charles Penworth is called upon to raise the child from the pit of her animal nature. But as Lilith learns to tame her feral heart and live amongst the glitterati of colonial Amsterdam, she begins to wonder, who, indeed, is the real savage?

'Theatrical wunderkinds Sisters Grimm, creators of the sell-out, award-winning NEON Festival hit The Sovereign Wife, take audiences on an epic, genre-defying journey – equal parts The Elephant Man and She’s All That.

'With the title role played by Ash Flanders, star of MTC’s one-man comedy Buyer and Cellar, this bold new piece promises to be as mind-altering and caustically funny as all of Sisters Grimm’s work to date.' (Production summary)

'A co-production with Sisters Grimm

'Melbourne theatre stars Sisters Grimm are everything nice, polite Australians fear: a pair of ‘loud, opinionated homosexualists’ (their words) who hold nothing sacred and whose moral compass is so far out it’s bang on. Declan Greene and Ash Flanders plunder the canon with one eye on mischief and the other on a necessary argument. Once the serial numbers are scratched off, their stolen goods are smelted into smart, anarchic comedies that question the world we live in.

'Verdi’s famed Romantic opera La Traviata is the story of Violetta, a lovelorn courtesan who is doomed to choose either a life of disgrace with the pauper she loves, or a life of upscale servitude to a baron. This is not that opera. At least, not quite. This La Traviata is part opera, part protest, part drag show – a freewheeling satire that shadows Verdi’s plot via the sweatshops of Mumbai and the wastepaper basket of the Federal Minister for the Arts.

'By staging an epic Romantic opera in the smallest theatre in Sydney, Sisters Grimm are plunging into the ever-expanding gap between wealth and poverty. Violetta sacrificed her life to uphold her beliefs. Will the heroine of this tale?' (Production summary)

''Calpurnia Descending' sends up the dangers of fame with the tale of Beverly Dumont – a reclusive, drunken, Depression-era Broadway washout. Beverly limps towards obscurity until a naive ingénue appears offering a final shot at glory. It’s the role of a lifetime, but the chalice soon proves poisoned and both women are drawn into a world of paranoia, sleaze and bloody, unrelenting ambition.

'The latest work from queer ‘DIY’ theatre duo Sisters Grimm ('The Sovereign Wife', 'Little Mercy') stars the inimitable Paul Capsis ('Angela’s Kitchen') and Ash Flanders. Rich in wit and piercing cultural critique, this fabulously entertaining work takes two of Australia’s finest male actresses and ignites a backstage Battle Royale.' (Source: Malthouse website)

'"The South will fall, and so will her pride... ...In the greatest love story ever told." Georgia. 1861. A faded Southern belle returns to the family plantation after ten years away from home. But where has she been? Why did she run? And what secrets are buried in the ol' greenhouse? A sweeping romance, set against the backdrop of the American Civil War.'

Source: www.sistersgrimm.com.au/ (Sighted 20/02/2012).

'Little Mercy. Evil just turned Eight ... Roger and Virginia Summers have it all. He, a successful theatre director. She, a successful drunken housewife. But their charmed lives are empty - they long for a child.

'Careful what you wish for.'

Source: Sisters Grimm website, http://www.sistersgrimm.com.au/
Sighted: 22/03/2010