State Theatre South Australia artistic director Mitchell Butel has revealed next year’s season, including world premieres and a couple of Broadway hits peppered among local and national works of note.
With the Dunstan Playhouse set to celebrate its 50th birthday, Butel says it’s fitting that the line-up includes a new work from arguably Australia’s greatest playwright, David Williamson, who was commissioned by the company to write his now-celebrated work The Department for its first season in the venue in 1974.
Butel told InReview that the work – a White Lotus meets Don’s Party affair set on a cruise ship – is a return to form for Williamson and could be his last.
The black comedy, called The Puzzle, will star Erik Thomson (Aftertaste, Packed to the Rafters), in September.
“It’s wonderful on the 50th anniversary to have a new work from our most celebrated playwright,” Butel says. “It’s a real return to form in terms of the comic balance as well.
“It’s kind of in the mode of White Lotus. I don’t know if he’s seen White Lotus but it speaks to how affluent middle-class people can get it so wrong.”
In the wake of State Theatre’s sell-out adaptation of local novel The Dictionary of Lost Words, Butel has scheduled another world-premiere adaptation of a loved work of Australian fiction – this time, Peter Carey’s Jack Maggs, a “sequel” of sorts to Dickens’ Great Expectations.
The work, by South Australian playwright Sam Adamson, was commissioned by former artistic director Geordie Brookman, who will return to direct the world premiere.
“It’s an exceptional, ambitious, intelligent work,” says Butel, adding that audiences can expect some “old school Elizabethan theatre tricks”.
“Like Dictionary, adapting great novels is something our audiences enjoy.”
Mark Saturno and James Smith will feature in Jack Maggs. Supplied image: State Theatre
The season will open with West End and Broadway hit The Children – playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s drama about a couple of retired nuclear scientists living in a small coastal village in the wake of a disaster.
As part of the Adelaide Festival, State Theatre is staging the Belvoir St production Blue, by 23-year-old Kamilaroi man Thomas Weatherall (Heartbreak High). Butel says “it’s one of the most assured piece of writing I have read in my life”. The monologue has been described as a “very personal fiction” and will star Wiradjuri man Callan Purcell (seen on stage recently as Aaron Burr in Hamilton).
Next will come a big, bold collaboration with State Opera South Australia and Adelaide Symphony Orchestra in a concert staging of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide.
Butel is promising campy, colourful fun in a production of the operetta in which he’ll assume the role of the Narrator and Candide’s teacher Pangloss. He’s also coaxed Hans (Matt Gilbertson) to the stage, along with Alex Lewis (The Merry Widow), Annie Aitken (Thoroughly Modern Millie), John Longmuir (The Pirates of Penzance) and West End music theatre darling Caroline O’Connor.
The show, based on Voltaire’s 1759 novella, was first performed in 1956, but has been through a number of iterations since then. The lyricists are a who’s who of great writers: Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker and Stephen Sondheim among them, with well-known songs including “The Best of All Possible Worlds”, “Glitter and Be Gay” and “Eldorado”.
Butel says the production is also moving, with a theme about the importance of acting with kindness and love as a response to the failure of optimism.
“The campery is one thing, but I think you will love the beautiful and affecting message as well.”
Rocketing the season into the 21st century is a world premiere “rom-com musical” by Australian writer and activist Van Badham with composer Richard Wise. The Questions is based on a true story about “the longest first date ever during a lockdown” – a classic rom-com mix about two very different people thrown together in circumstances beyond their control. Butel says it’s cruel, funny and smart.
Charles Wu will star in Van Badham’s The Questions. Supplied image: State Theatre
Justine Clarke will return to the Playhouse in 2024, after this year’s reprise of the devastating Girls & Boys, as former Prime Minister Julia Gillard in Joanna Murray-Smith’s Julia.
The show – which combines history, such as Gillard’s famous misogyny speech, with the playwright’s creative imaginings – takes the audience from the first female Prime Minister’s childhood and education in Adelaide to her journey into the maelstrom of Australian politics.
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Part of the company’s schools-focused State Educate program, Symphonie of the Bicycle is the story of an aspiring cyclist, told in conjunction with the true story of two-time Tour de France champion Gino Bartali. The solo show from Hew Parham was well-received in its premiere by Brink Productions last year.
Butel says the mix of productions has revealed an appropriate theme for the times.
“With the whole season, what we try to do is mix new Australian works, particularly South Australian works, with other national premieres and recent works,” he says.
“The themes are revealed as we put the season together – but I think the act of listening to voices different to ourselves is key to all these shows, really.
“Given when we’re launching, it feels like an important topic.”
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