A new year ripe with promise and possibilities stretches out before us. The Sydney Festival opens tomorrow; Perth’s Fringe World and Perth International Arts Festival are just around the corner, and Adelaide Festival and Adelaide Fringe are waiting in the wings. Then there’s a host of state theatre companies, opera companies, contemporary dance companies and individual artists all waiting to present their work to us.
No doubt it’s going to be another brilliant year in the performing arts. Here are just some of the many productions we’re looking forward to in 2013.
The Secret River
A Sydney Theatre Company/Sydney Festival co-production, The Secret River sees two of our most respected theatre-makers – playwright Andrew Bovell and director Neil Armfield – working together to bring Kate Grenville’s award-winning novel about the early days of the colony of New South Wales to vivid new life. Winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Literature, the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction and several other awards, The Secret River explores the clash between Indigenous Australians and European settlers on the Hawkesbury River in the early 19th century. Armfield’s first production at the STC in 13 years will star Trevor Jamieson (Namatjira), Nathaniel Dean (Walking on Water), Anita Hegh (Gross und Klein), Ursula Yovich (Bloodland) and others in a production that promises to be as rich, dark, and haunting as the history of our nation itself.
Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay: 8 January – 9 February
www.sydneytheatre.com.au
His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth: 25 February – 2 March
Holding the Man
First published in February 1995, just a few months after its author’s death, Timothy Conigrave’s bestselling memoir remains one of the most important books ever written about the AIDS crisis. It’s also a remarkable and moving testimony to Tim’s love for his partner John, who he met while the two were at secondary school together in Melbourne in the 1970s. For their second mainstage production for 2013, Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre Company present Tommy Murphy’s acclaimed adaptation of Holding the Man, once more directed by David Berthold, whose definitive original production smashed box office records for Griffin Theatre Company when it premiered in 2006. Deeply human and achingly beautiful, this contemporary Australian classic will have you shrieking with mirth and sobbing with grief – don’t miss it.
Roundhouse Theatre, Kelvin Grove
16 February – 16 March
Kamp
How can theatre come to grips with the unimaginable? The horrors of the Holocaust – mass murder on an industrial scale – come to haunting life in Kamp, presented by Dutch company Hotel Modern as part of this year’s Adelaide Festival. On a scale model set built of paper and cardboard and based on Auschwitz-Birkenau, thousands of eight centimetre tall puppets made of plasticine seem to live and die thanks to the efforts of a team of actors equipped with miniature cameras, the resulting images projected on a screen above the stage. Part theatre, part installation, Kamp works because puppets can simultaneously be just objects, not flesh and blood, while also being more human than human thanks to the skilful manipulations of the company’s puppeteers. Not for the faint-hearted, but sure to be a festival highlight.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
12 – 17 March
A Clockwork Orange
First published in 1962, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange is a classic work of dystopian fiction exploring youth rebellion, the human propensity for violence, and the question of free will. Narrated in the first person in ‘nadsat’ – a hybrid of Russian, Cockney rhyming slang and other argots – the book has previously been adapted for the screen by Stanley Kubrick, Andy Warhol, and for the stage by Burgess himself, among others. Now UK theatre company Action to the Word bring their own critically acclaimed, all-male production of A Clockwork Orange to Australia following successful seasons in Edinburgh and Soho in the book’s 50th anniversary year. Balletic violence, aggressive homoeroticism, and a lush soundtrack featuring Bowie, Placebo, Gossip and – of course – Beethoven combine to create a production praised as ‘disturbing, frightening and thrilling … a masterpiece’ by the Daily Star.
The Malthouse, Melbourne: 6 – 21 April
Seymour Centre, Sydney: 23 –May 5 April
Subiaco Arts Centre: 8 – 19 May
Canberra Theatre Centre: 22 – 25 May
Queensland Performing Arts Centre: 28 May – 9 June
The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars
A new play by the ferociously talented Australian playwright Van Badham, this love story set in the world of art and antiquities features a man and a woman working in a museum and struggling with their growing attraction for each other, as a monster possibly prowls among the relics. A whimsical, sensual and intimate romance inspired by the Greek myths of Ariadne, Theseus and the Minotaur, The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars is a co-production between Albury’s Hothouse Theatre, Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company, and Merrigong Theatre Company in Badham’s home town of Wollongong, where the play will premiere.
Illawarra Performing Arts Centre: 17 – 27 April
SBW Stables Theatre: 2 May – 8 June
Hothouse Theatre: 13 – 22 June
Hedda Gabler
The State Theatre Company of South Australia presents a new production of Hedda Gabler, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith, directed by Geordie Brookman, and starring Alison Bell (Belvoir’s As You Like It, ABC TV’s Laid) as Ibsen’s manipulative, victimised, feminist forerunner. A woman who defies the traditional constraints of her gender, Hedda is one of modern drama’s most powerful and charismatic characters – a woman whose decision to use her sexuality as a weapon flies in the face of her era’s straight-laced Victorian values. In the words of Alan Jones, she’s ‘destroying the joint’ – and we urge you to be watching when Hedda brings the house tumbling down.
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
26 April – 18 May
www.statetheatrecompany.com.au
Blak
One of our best contemporary dance companies, and arguably our most evocative, Bangarra Dance Theatre is Australia’s leading Indigenous performing arts organisation. In 2013 the company presents Blak, a brand new work choreographed by Bangarra’s Artistic Director Stephen Page and emerging choreographer and dancer Daniel Riley McKinley. In a rapidly changing world, Blak explores the importance of culture and tradition, the value of rites of passage, and the songlines that connect our future with our ancient past. Based on the company’s previous works, it’s sure to be exceptional.
Arts Centre Melbourne: 3 – 11 May
Sydney Opera House: 7 – 22 June
Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Wollongong: 17 – 18 May
Canberra Theatre Centre: 11 – 13 July
Queensland Performing Arts Centre: 18 – 27 July
King Kong
When it opened in New York City on 2 March, 1933, Merian C. Cooper’s King Kong amazed audiences with its images of a giant gorilla rampaging through New York in search of the screaming Fay Wray. For the film, Kong was brought to life through the then ground-breaking technology of stop-motion animation. The technology needed to animate Kong today is very different, though no less innovative. In this new stage musical based on the original film, directed by Daniel Kramer, with original music composed and arranged by Marius de Vries, Kong will come to life thanks to sophisticated animatronics and a team of puppeteers led by Puppetry Director Peter Wilson, co-founder of Handspan Theatre. Kong himself – all six metres of him – is being designed by Sonny Tilders, the man behind the animatronic dinosaurs and dragons in Global Creatures’ two previous productions, Walking With Dinosaurs The Arena Spectacular and How To Train Your Dragon Arena Spectacular. New musical theatre doesn’t get more epic than this.
Regent Theatre, Melbourne
28 May – 14 July
www.kingkongliveonstage.com.au
Alienation
Arguments between theists and atheists are so 20th century. In Alienation, award-winning NSW playwright Lachlan Philpott (Silent Disco) updates the argument about belief, faith and phenomenon for the 21st century with a brand new work inspired by interviews with Australian alien abductees. A co-production with NSW’s Q Theatre Company, Alienation will challenge both believers and sceptics, and promises to be a fresh, fascinating and perhaps even unsettling evening of drama, mystery and imagination.
Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre of WA
2 – 13 July
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Wagner’s Ring cycle is one of the greatest works in the canon of western art; a massive operatic undertaking in four parts inspired by Teutonic myth and featuring ancient gods, deadly curses and a magic ring, and culminating in the destruction of the world. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth in 2013, Opera Australia presents the Ring cycle in its entirety; four epic operas (Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Seigfried and Götterdämmerung), each performed thrice by a cast of outstanding Wagnerian artists from around the world under the direction of Australia’s Neil Armfield. Grandiose doesn’t do the Ring cycle justice – this is the Olympics of the arts.
State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
18 November – 13 December
