Cirrus@Austlit

'Three playwrights take great joy in propelling their characters through the streets of the tourist city that is Cairns. Our story opens with a busker on the ‘narde painting musical images of a night on the Esplanade where backpackers and locals swim in the tropical miasma that is the wet season. The tension rises as the nightclubs empty and the Esplanade fills.

'We are then introduced to our Sydney-sider souvenir entrepreneur arriving to open her souvenir (read tacky) emporium. A new business venture that promises to end her money woes. But will it come crashing down around her?

'We are then taken to a winters’ night in Melbourne where lonely Moira has invited her fellow Cairns Reef & Rainforest Tour buddies for a slide night reunion where they all see themselves through Moira’s eyes.' (Production summary)

Theatre legend Michael Gow creates an exciting new chamber opera, with music realised by Calvin Bowman and the late Alan Curtis. Voyage to the Moon combines gems from Handel and Vivaldi with rediscovered treasures from little-known 18th-century composers.

Leading Australian singers, soprano Emma Matthews and mezzo Sally-Anne Russell, share the stage with a brilliant newcomer, bass-baritone Jeremy Kleeman along with a hand-picked band of leading chamber musicians led by Phoebe Briggs, Head of Music at Victorian Opera.

Baroque music is set to 21st-century words to tell of Astolfo’s journey to the Moon, negotiating supernatural beings and a love triangle, in the hope of restoring his friend’s sanity. (Adelaide Festival of Arts)

'Eloquent, playful, big-thinking, tender and fierce – Michael Gow’s new play is an astonishing act of theatrical invention.

'Will Drummond is bewildered. All the old certainties are coming apart. When he finds himself sitting by his mother’s bedside in a hospital room on the north coast of New South Wales, suddenly he’s faced with the mortality of loved ones, faced with the state of the world as it was and as it is right now. Set adrift, Will considers loss and what’s left, class and contradiction, and navigating a corporatised and globalised world alone.

'Once in Royal David’s City is big and small at once, tumbling from the fifties to the present, from East Berlin to Byron Bay, from brief encounters to the cycles of history. It’s about death and Christmas and class warfare and what to teach school children about politics and art. It’s about the old working class and the new middle class and what one has to learn from each other.

'It is beautiful.'' (Source: Belvoir website)

'Roland Henning has writer's block. When he tries to explain the situation to a therapist, his story begins to tumble back and forth between his childhood in The Shire and his work as a playwright. At the root of it all is that extraordinary day in primary school which shattered his boyhood and plunged him headlong into the dizzy circus of life and art.'

Source: Belvoir Street website, http://www.belvoir.com.au
Sighted: 05/11/2007

'As Richard Mahony struggles with survival, identity and sanity, with one foot in the old country and a toe-hold in the new, his life gallops alongside the great events of the nineteenth century. Written with enormous emotional power, this is the spiralling story of a nation’s turbulent adolescence.' (Publisher's abstract.)

'Commencing with a school performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Shakespearean themes of suffering and reconciliation persist as three families on separate holidays are united during a fierce storm.

'Immigrants Harry and Vic love their adopted country but are faced with their son Tom’s terminal illness. Jim and Gwen fret over their daughter Meg’s blossoming independence and her friendship with the socially unsuitable Tom. Roy is unable to console a grief-stricken Coral over the death of their only son in Vietnam.

'But with the help of some Shakespearean fairies and a spectacular storm, these families are reconciled and face the future anew.

'For two decades audiences have been enthralled by this story about the coming of age of both a group of individuals and the country in which they live. Despite being set almost 40 years ago, this multi-award winning play is as relevant as ever with its themes of reconciliation and loss.

'Away is sharply observed, clever, funny and yet very moving. Out of the familiar family ingredients, Gow has constructed a magical play that every Australian can relate to. It depicts the hopes of a new generation, prompting us to consider what is ultimately most important in our lives.' (Publication summary)