PLAY ON

Play On by Rick Abbot is a comedy about the offstage and onstage antics of a community theatre group. Gerry the director has no idea what she has gotten herself into. The murder mystery plot is missing a murder, unless of course the disgruntled cast bump off the playwright who insists on last minute rewrites days before opening night. The hilariously amateur actors miss cues, techies fail to produce vital support and to top it off the cast and crew are on each other’s nerves. Opening night of Murder Most Foul includes shenanigans and slip-ups with hilarious mishaps at every turn.

COSI

In this classic Australian play by Louis Nowra a Sydney slacker gets the chance to stage an opera, but his cast are assembled from the ranks of the mentally ill…

College dropout Lewis, desperately needs some money and fakes his way into a job doing occupational therapy with a group of asylum inmates. Although Lewis’s original idea is to stage a protest play, in keeping with his political ideas and anti-Vietnam war stance, manic-depressive patient Roy soon hijacks the project and convinces Lewis to helm an adaptation of his favorite opera, Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutti. Lewis' unlikely cast ranges from psycho-firebug Doug, flick-knife obsessed Cherry, OCD-suffering Ruth and the drug-addicted Julie. Given the dearth of acting and singing experience among these players, Lewis opts to translate the piece from Italian to English and stage it as a play with only a few pieces of music. The show still proves to be more than its director bargained for -- despite the dubious assistance of his friend Nick, a political activist and actor/director who has his eye on Lewis’s girlfriend Lucy. Through working with the patients and developing empathy for their plight, Lewis also discovers a new side of himself, allowing him to emotionally connect and to value love, while anti-Vietnam war protests erupt in the streets outside…

** NOTE ** Double Bill Matinee: Tuesday 8th November, Play On starts at 9:30am & Cosi begins at 12:30pm