The theme for next year's Canberra Repertory Society season is From the Edge.
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Rep president Michael Sparks says on looking at the six plays for 2020, "the thing that unites them is that each of them represents being on the edge of something".
In the first play of Rep's 88th season, the characters are on the edge of society, "people pushed out through no fault of their own".
Chris Baldock will direct Frank Galati's 1988 adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath (February 13 to 29). The family drama, based on John Steinbeck's award-winning 1939 novel, is set during the the Great Depression.
"A displaced Oklahoma family head to California hoping for a better life."
Three generations of the Joads embark on the long journey west, along with many other "Okies", having various experiences and encounters along the way.
Sparks says it's a play about the human spirit and the struggle to be free to work. The actors include Michael Cooper as the eldest son, Tom, and Karen Vickery as Ma.
Vickery will also direct the next production (April 30 to May 16) in her Canberra Rep directorial debut, and it's also set during the Depression. Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs (1983) is a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama about Jewish Brooklyn teenager Eugene Jerome and his family.
"He experiences the changes boys and young men go through ... When his Aunt Blanche moves in with her two daughters it creates an interesting family dynamic."
[T]he thing that unites them is that each of them represents being on the edge of something
- Michael Sparks
Beatrix Christian (Jindabyne) is the author of the third play, The Governor's Family (2008). It will be on from be June 11 to 27 and will be directed by Tony Llewellyn-Jones.
It's set in 1897. The newly appointed (fictional) governor of New South Wales, his wife, and their two children feel barely able to leave the house.
"He only wants to go out for official functions," Sparks says. The play deals with the reasons for this and matters deal with include the relationships between the white and Indigenous inhabitants include desire and madness.
Speaking of madness, Joe Orton's farce What the Butler Saw (July 7 to August 15) is set in a psychiatric clinic. It begins with a psychiatrist, Dr Prentice, attempting to seduce Geraldine, a potential secretary, when his wife enters. She is also being seduced - and blackmailed - by a bellboy to whom she has offered the secretarial job.
"A government inspector arrives and chaos ensues involving underpants, cross-dressing and the missing parts of Winston Churchill."
The play will be directed by Liz Bradley.
The penultimate production of the season will be John Patrick Shanley's Doubt: A Parable (2004), directed by Ed Wightman and on from September 10 to 26. In a New York Catholic school in 1964, progressive parish pries Father Flynn and disciplinarian school principal Sister Aloysius are antagonists.
"He is unconventional and she doesn't like it - he doesn't want to be as strict in all the rules," Sparks says.
Matters come to a head when an allegation arise that Flynn has behaved inappropriately with Donald Muller, the school's first African-American student. The priest denies any wrongdoing and the matter comes under investigation. Sparks says the play brings up questions of faith and Christianity, kindness and compassion, and civil rights.
Finally, Jarrad West will direct Alan Ayckbourne's 1972 dark comedy Absurd Personal Singular (November 19 to December 5). This play, Sparks says, is about "being on the edge of madness".
Three couples are seen hosting each other in their three kitchens over three Christmas Eves. Sidney and Jane Hopcroft are "young wannabes who want to be socially mobile". To show off their new kitchen, they invite their bank manager, Ronald, and his second wife, Marion, along with their neighbours, Geoffrey, an architect, and his wife, Eva. The venues for the get-togethers change but one thing remains the same: "Everything goes a bit nuts."
Coming back to 2019, Sparks says Rep is trying something new, a co-production with the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. Stephen Pike will direct the Noel Coward comedy Waiting in the Wings, about a retirement community for actresses. It will be on at the Q from November 20 to 23, then at Rep from November 27 to December 7.
Canberra Repertory Society 2020 season. canberrarep.org.au.