Canberra Repertory Society's 2023 plays range from Agnes of God to Amadeus

At the announcement of the plays and directors in Rep's 91^st season on Friday, October 28, 2022, Rep president Antonia Kitzel said that next year, evening performances would start at 7.30pm instead of the long-established 8pm - 7.30 in recognition of the move in 1973.

"It's better for everyone involved," Kitzel said - audiences, actors, backstage workers and front of house volunteers.

"It allows people to get home a bit earlier on a school night and it makes the night a little bit less late especially if the play is a little longer."

The change had been discussed by Rep's committee after many overheard foyer comments to the effect that the evening would end late.

Kitzel said the 2023 change to 7.30pm would be noted on the Rep website and when people bought tickets.

This year's final production, Sense and Sensibility, on from November 17, will be the last with evening performances starting at 8pm.

The theme of the 2023 season, Kitzel said, was, "Reimagining ... seeing things from a different angle, in a different light".

The season will begin on February 16 with John Pielmeier's Agnes of God, directed by Rachel Hogan.

"It's my first involvement of any kind with Rep," said Hogan, who has worked a lot in new theatre and directed Pygmalion for Tempo Theatre.

"There are some very talented female actors who don't enough opportunities to strut their stuff."

Inspired by a true story, Agnes of God has three characters: a young nun in whose quarters a dead newborn baby was found, the Mother Superior of the convent, and a court-appointed psychiatrist who comes to investigate. But it's focused on other issues rather than simply whodunit.

"It's a play about womanhood," Hogan said, "about the gap between the ideal of womanhood and the reality lived by women."

Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley is the second play and will open on April 27. Directed by Karen Vickery, it's the story of three sisters reunited for the first time in a decade in their home town of Hazelhurst, Mississippi when the youngest is arrested for the murder of her abusive husband.

The third play, opening on June 15, will be Home, I'm Darling by Laura Wade, directed by Alexandra Pelvin.

It will be Pelvin's second time directing for Rep - she began with this year's Hotel Sorrento.

Pelvin has also worked backstage and acted in Rep shows, most recently this year's Our Country's Good.

In Home, I'm Darling, modern British DINK - double income, no kids - couple John and Judy decide they want to live an authentically 1950s lifestyle after Judy is made redundant and receives some money inheritance.

"It's a reaction to the pressures of modern living," Pelvin said.

They even renovate their house to resemble the earlier era.

The reaction of family and friends ranges from bemusement to envy to, from Judy's mother Sylvia, a staunch feminist who lived through the 1950s, distaste.

But how long will they be able to make it work - financially and practically?

Pelvin said the play "deals with the power of nostalgia and how people can be seduced by it".

Fourth in the 2023 season is Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, opening on July 27. To be directed by Cate Clelland, it tells the story of Austrian court composer Antonio Salieri's obsession with and envy of the greater talent of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose vulgarity makes him, in Salieri's view, unworthy of such a gift from God.

Stephen Pike will direct the fifth play in the season. Mr Bennet's Bride, by Emma Wood, will open on September 7. It's a prequel to Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, telling the story of how the Bennet sisters' ill-suited parents ended up married.

Finally, from November 16, will be The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield. Directed by Ylaria Rogers, it will see three actors race through all 37 of Shakespeare's plays.

Kitzel said the play was "absurd, fast-paced full-on farcical fun and full steam ahead ... It's very funny".

For more information on Canberra Repertory Society and its 2023 season visit canberrarep.org.au.