About the Production This is the story of Peter Pan told in the form of a traditional Pantomime. Which means a Dame in drag, plus lots of audience participation, local references and slapstick humour. A traditional aspect of Panto is that characters from different stories can show up. We’ll be drawing on One Flew Over Read More
Directed by Stephen Mitchell The Phee Broadway Theatre, Mechanics Lane, Castlemaine A black comedy set in Regency London, where our cross-dressing heroine negotiates a venal world of Bodysnatchers, villainous Surgeons, dishonest Undertakers, drunk Prostitutes and the occasional Solemn Angel and Foul Demon. Accompanied by the raucous songs of street balladeer Penny Dreadful, Frankenstein’s Children dives Read More
“Oh my god, I almost wet my pants!” – Cosi audience member
Our first show of the year was an Australian favourite, Cosi by Louis Nowra, written in 1992. This popular black comedy has become a mainstay for community theatre both because of it’s large cast with a variety ages, and good balance of gender roles, and because it reveals the drama of creating theatre from the ground up with limited resources, against the odds. The play is set in 1971 against the background of the Vietnam War, in a Melbourne mental institution. A young director, Lewis (the character is based on Nowra) has been charged with producing a play with the patients, as part of a therapeutic program ‘to get them out of their shells’. One of the patients Roy has decided that the play they will produce is Mozart’s comic opera, Cosi Fan Tutte. None of the patients can speak Italian, much less sing – indeed, some can barely speak. To make matters worse the venue is a fire-gutted theatre with a leaky roof and faulty wiring. The cast includes a pyromaniac, a junkie, a knife-wielding romantic, a confused realist, a Lithium-addicted pianist who hates Mozart and a stuttering ex-lawyer who refuses to take part in the production. Lewis, needless to say is slightly discouraged by the task at hand. Nowra’s humour exposes weakness and stupidity, it ridicules our prejudices and popular institutions, but it is not exploitative or gratuitous. Writer Frank Gauntlett has claimed that ‘when Louis Nowra places his fruitcake-rich, riotously funny, beautifully conceived play Cosi in a Melbourne madhouse, he has less to say about life within the rubber walls than without.’
Michael Gillies as Zac
Nikki Sutterby as Ruth
David Watson as Roy
David Watson as Roy
David Watson as Roy and Morgan Kurrajong as Doug
Cosi poster
Lloyd Dodsworth as Lewis with Michael Gillies as Justin
Ellie Barkla as Cherry
April Garreffa as Julie and Thomas Jones as Nick
April Garreffa as Julie
Finale
Cosi fan Tutte
Ellie has finally had it with Morgan Kurrajong
Ellie Barkla and April Gareffa, it’ll soon be over girls!
David Watson shares his vision with Lloyd
Nikki Sutterley
Lloyd has also seen the light!
Watch out Michael, now Nikki’s at it!
Lloyd Dodsworth practicing a stage punch – pretty convincing
Thomas Jones lines up David and Lloyd for some shock therapy