during NAIDOC Week. The Blue Room is next door to the State Theatre Centre, where Black Swan State Theatre Company is presenting three plays in the Heath Ledger Theatre over winter. Downstairs, in the Studio Underground, the ever-contentious subject of alien abductions will occupy the minds of audiences at the Perth Theatre Company play Alienation. Written by NSW playwright Lachlan Philpott, the coproduction with Penrith’s Q Theatre Company is inspired by interviews with Australians who claim to have been abducted by aliens. Over in East Perth, a new venue has opened in the premises of the Equity Guild building, where the all-women theatre troupe HIVE (Her Infinite Variety Ensemble) will pay tribute to the pioneering actresses of Restoration London. Running until June 8, HIVE is presenting Playhouse Creatures by April de Angelis, a bawdy romp based on a key moment in theatre history when
women were allowed to tread the boards for the first time in the 1660s when the theatres were re-opened after years of suppression under the Puritans. Playhouse Creatures, first staged in 1993, deals with a period under the reign of King Charles II when acting was regarded much the same as prostitution. De Angelis’ play brings to life the famous actresses of that time, including Nell Gwyn, Mary Betterton and Elizabeth Farley, and is a perfect fit for HIVE, which was formed to perform stronger roles for women, says HIVE producer and actor Rhoda Lopez. “April de Angelis has written a great ensemble piece in which each female character is quite different, with their own challenges of the time,” Lopez says. Amid the strong local theatre offerings, one international production is driving into town with two legends of stage and screen at the wheel. Hollywood and Broadway stars Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones will hit the
road for His Majesty’s Theatre next month in their star vehicle Driving Miss Daisy. Lansbury, 87, and Jones, 82, appear with Broadway actor Boyd Gaines in Alfred Uhry’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which was adapted into the Oscar-winning film directed by Bruce Beresford. Set in America’s racist Deep South, circa 1950, the story deals with an elderly white spinster who slowly befriends her black chauffeur.
Roz Hammond
Swan dives into the drama ■ Stephen Bevis
T
he final instalment of Tim Winton’s trilogy of plays rounds out a busy winter for Black Swan State Theatre Company. Winton’s Shrine completes his collaboration with Black Swan artistic director Kate Cherry that began with Rising Water in 2011 and continued last year with Signs of life. Shrine, about the family fallout from a son’s fatal road crash, is the final course in a seasonal banquet that starts next month with Joanna Murray-Smith’s latest comedy of manners Day One, A Hotel, Evening followed by Jon Robin Baitz’ 2012 Tony Award-nominated play Other Desert Cities. All plays are at the State Theatre Centre, which should be zinging with waspish one-liners when Roz Hammond (The Librarians, Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell) and Jacob Allen (Packed to the Rafters) lead a cast of three self-indulgent couples in Murray-Smith’s satire of the middle classes. Cherry says the Melbourne playwright’s gift for comedic plot twists is at its best in this story about the romantic entanglements of the well-heeled. Cherry has recently returned from an overseas trip which included a visit to Palm Springs, the setting for Other Desert Cities. She is excited that Black Swan secured the local rights to
Other Desert Cities so soon after the Broadway run for the play that mixes national politics with domestic turmoil set off by a daughter’s Christmas homecoming. “I thought it was really interesting that Other Desert Cities has had such acclaim but also is about another city like Perth surrounded by desert and with a rich cultural engagement in which the city itself is used as a political battleground,” Cherry says. “Other Desert Cities and Shrine, although they deal with very different cultures, have that very central issue of generations looking at each other and trying to understand one another across wide gaps.” Australian screen and stage star John Howard (All Saints, SeaChange, Rising Water) appears in Shrine as a well-off winery owner whose life unravels after his son crashes his car into a tree. He finds redemption after meeting a young woman erecting a tacky roadside shrine in his son’s memory. Cherry says she is hoping in the “not-too-distant future” to direct a Black Swan revival of the landmark 1998 play Cloudstreet, adapted from Winton’s 1992 novel. Day One, A Hotel, Evening runs June 15-30; Other Desert Cities runs July 20 to August 4; Shrine runs August 31 to September 15.
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