By Peter Kemp
A Reminder
Lilydale Athenaeum Theatre
Cosi
It’s 1971 and outside on the streets, Australia is protesting the war in Vietnam. But inside a burned-out theatre, the resident patients of a mental asylum are listening to Mozart, learning their lines and occasionally skipping their medication.
Louis Nowra’s renowned Australian comedy finds light in the darkness and challenges our perceptions about, love, madness, and humanity. A darkly funny and deeply moving ensemble piece, Cosi celebrates theatre and its power to transform lives.
Season: 18 August – 3 September
Bookings: 9735 1999
Business: hours Mon, Tues, Fri 9am to 2pm.
Eltham Little Theatre
Moon Over Buffalo
It is the summer of 1953, and George and Charlotte Hay, a formerly a couple of Broadway stars have taken their run-down touring company to Buffalo, New York. In Buffalo they have the intention of running Cyrano de Bergerac and Private Lives in repertory, all the while grumbling about missed Hollywood opportunities. But onstage harmony is compromised when George performs an off-stage infidelity, impregnating the company’s ingénue.
When Charlotte learns of this, she prepares to run away with the family lawyer, sending light-weight George on a grief-stricken drinking binge> It turns out that Frank Capra is headed to town on a talent scouting mission looking to hire the couple for his swashbuckling Scarlet Pimpernel epic/ As a result, the Hay family – including scornful, deaf mother-in-law Ethel, determinedly practical daughter Rosalind, and dashing actor Paul, Rosalind’s ex boy-friend – must work overtime to get sloppy drunk George into his Cyrano hat and nose and worse… or into his Elyot Chase smoking jacket? With he entrance of Rosalind’s dalliance, anxious TV weatherman Howard – one man with two mistaken identities – and Richard Maynard, the wealthy lawyer hopping to lure Charlotte away to his mansion – the confusion only intensifies.
With a plethora of pratfalls, slamming doors aplenty, and backstage shenanigans.
Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo is a fast-paced, hilarious screwball comedy in the old tradition, a throwback farce, a valentine to the stage and the larger-than-life personalities that inhabit the world of theatre.
Season: 2 – 17 September
Bookings: 0411 713 095
