A new beginning

Wesley Enoch programs his first full season as artistic director of the Queensland Theatre Company in 2012. The result is a season marked by both variety and a strong commitment to local work. From Elizabethan England to the Australian Outback, the QTC dishes up a tasty palette of new and traditional theatre.

The season opens in February with the Australian classic, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (22 Feb - 11 Mar). Every summer, cane-cutters Barney and Roo come back from Queensland to the Carlton house they share with Nancy and Olive for an annual season of fun and frivolity.

But this summer is different. Nancy has gone and got married, Roo is flat broke, and the friends just can’t seem to recreate the chemistry of years gone by. After 17 years, could this really be the end?

“The Doll” is one of the pillars of our national theatre. Australian playwriting came of age with the premiere of this play in 1955. Set in an inner-city Melbourne townhouse and filled with quintessential Australian language of the era, it was the first time we saw ourselves truly reflected on stage. Summer of the Seventeenth Doll by Ray Lawler is a classic, must-see play about the nature of happiness, the destruction of idealism, and the struggle to accept change and find life anew.
 
From Joanna Murray-Smith the writer of Female of the Species, Rockabye, and Ninety comes Bombshells (17 Mar – 21 Apr), a cheeky, insightful and salaciously entertaining look at the inner thoughts of the modern Australian woman.

In a series of vignettes we’re introduced to six colourfully complex characters who are all on the brink of falling apart. Christen O’Leary is a singing, dancing and acting dynamo who plays a housewife running on empty, a cactus-loving divorcee, an anxious bride, a Glee Club wannabe, a yearning sexagenarian, and a cabaret diva singing her last hurrah. Bombshells is a witty, funny and intimate theatre romp, jam-packed with vitality and vivacious storytelling. An affirmation of the anxieties, emotions and fantasies of everyday heroines.

In the heat of a raging feud between their two households, teenagers Romeo and Juliet fall in love at first sight, in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (21 Apr – 13 May). With a price on Romeo’s head, and Juliet suddenly betrothed to another man, the young lovers share a night of forbidden passion before Romeo flees the city. Juliet’s desperate pleas to call off the wedding are denied, and she hatches a secret plan for them to be reunited, with devastating consequences.

Shakespeare’s classic will be directed by Jennifer Flowers and star Thomas Larkin (Hamlet) and Melanie Zanetti (Pygmalion).
 
In the final day of her life, an ailing Elizabeth I clings desperately to her throne and her sanity in Elizabeth, Almost by Chance a Woman (26 May – 24 Jun). It has been eleven days since she last slept, and she rightly fears that if she allows herself to bed she may not rise again.

Lascivious, neurotic and narcissistic, the once stoic ruler is now stark raving mad. Her mind conjures up vivid memories and grandly paranoid delusions, first and foremost that William Shakespeare has plagiarised the events of her life in each of his famous plays. Suddenly, her boudoir transforms into The Globe Theatre, where the last few hours of her reign are played out in stratospherically high drama. Not only must Her Royal Redness stave off pesky coups and conspiracies, she’s intermittently haunted by the headless ghost of her Scottish sister Mary. To make matters even worse, hunky heartbreaker Robert Essex is due any minute and Her Majesty is in no condition to receive guests. But that’s nothing a bit of leech-o-suction and a bee sting booblift won’t fix…

Drawing on all the energy, spirit and spontaneity of original 16th century commedia dell’arte, Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo (Accidental Death of an Anarchist) offers up a modern stage masterpiece which transcends language and culture.

Elizabeth, Almost by Chance a Woman is in equal parts a bawdy burlesque, a riotous nose-thumbing of authority, and a surprisingly touching insight into the challenges of womanhood.
 
The Annual Alice Springs Beanie Festival is fast approaching and Tilly Napuljari is out of time to finish her new creation in time to enter it for judging. Nessa Tavistock, a Sydneysider, has run away to the red centre to escape her own problems back in the big smoke. Head Full of Love (7 Jul – 11 Aug) by Alana Valentine is the story of these two remarkable women and the unlikely but inspiring friendship which forms between them. It invites you to look differently at the possibilities of the humble beanie: a much-loved everyday item, and an extension of ourselves and the everyday lives we wear.

This intricate, warm and wisely told tale by Australian playwright Alana Valentine (Run Rabbit Run) is directed by Wesley Enoch and stars Colette Mann (Priscilla Queen of the Desert) and Roxanne McDonald (Skin of our Teeth).
 
Dramatically entwining fact, theory and myth, Kelly (15 Sep – 20 Oct) is the latest achievement of Brisbane-based playwright Matthew Ryan (boy girl wall).

Ned Kelly sits in a grimy cell at Old Melbourne Gaol on the night before his execution. His brother and fellow gang member Dan, who Ned believes died at the siege of Glenrowan, visits disguised as a priest. He’s seeking Ned’s blessing and forgiveness before heading north to start a new life in Queensland. But after everything they’ve been through together over the years, and how all of this has affected them, a blessing is not an easy ask. Brothers of the same blood and name, but with very different perspectives of their past; cowards, murderers or heroes? Life or death? Now, at the end, they confront each other, striving to understand their past.

Kelly is a fast-moving, action-packed story which portrays the infamous cult heroes in a totally new light.
 
October sees the QTC present David Williamson’s Managing Carmen (13 Oct - 4 Nov). Brent Lyall has it all. At 23 years old he has a beautiful girlfriend, two Brownlow medals, and he’s already the captain of one of the most powerful football clubs in the land. There’s just one small hitch. Occasionally he enjoys dressing up in women’s clothes. Uncovering his client’s penchant for cross dressing, Brent’s wily agent Rohan Swift swings into damage control to prevent the devastating truth from coming out.

The media already has a whiff of the story and the humiliation of a public outing would spell the end of the athlete’s career, not to mention the mountains of cash they’re both making through endorsements.

Inevitably, the AFL player’s addiction is irrepressible and his alter ego must beset free. With more than 40 years in the business and a string of box office successes,  David Williamson (Don’s Party) has earned a reputation as our country’s most popular and successful playwright. Managing Carmen is Williamson’s latest laugh-out-loud instalment, holding a mirror up to the personalities we’ve all come to love and hate – the whatever-it-takes businessman, the bimbo trophy wife, and of course, the flawed footy hero.
 
The mainstage program is complemented by two supplementary performances. First up, in March, is the return of bangarra dance theatre with Bloodland (14 - 18 Mar).

Outsider Cherish will be our guide through a community torn in two, divided by bloodline. This is Cherish’s place, this is where she hides away from the real world, speaks to imagined friends and is visited by ghosts of relatives long dead. At the centre of the story is a young couple; two lovers united in their devotion but separated by clan. Theirs is a tale of social  dysfunction, black on black conflict and the difficulties of observing traditional lore in a community permeated by western values.

Stephen Page, Artistic Director of Bangarra Dance Theatre and award-winning choreographer, collaborates with writer and actor Wayne Blair on this landmark work. Stephen and Wayne developed this original work for over a year, collaborating with local  storytellers in Arnhem Land. Featuring an Indigenous cast of twelve including established urban actors as well as  traditional Yolngu storytellers, Bloodland fuses traditional languages and Pidgin English, plus dance and song to tell the story. Bloodland promises to be unique in scale and significance.
 
That will be followed in July with the stage version of the hit BBC TV show Yes, Prime Minister (5 - 15 Jul). The series is now a hilarious new stage play and has become London’s biggest comedy sensation in decades.

Enter Jim Hacker’s world of hung parliaments, a nation in financial crisis, a world of global warming, illegal immigrants and oil rich dictators. Yes, Prime Minister is a hysterical foray into the comedy of politics and intrigue. Set in the present day, in the oak-panelled drawing room of the British Prime Minister’s country residence, the embattled PM, Sir Humphrey and Bernard are back – this time facing their greatest challenge yet! The European Union is in financial meltdown and Hacker is hanging onto power by a thread as he heads up a minority government. Then the country of Kumranistan throws a potential lifeline – a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure deal which could save the British economy.

Closing the deal, however, will be tricky, and may require some rather unsavoury bargaining. Hacker and his team meet at Chequers to navigate the political and moral minefield and evade the ever-present media who will, of course, try to catch them out.

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