Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre presents its 2024 season – ten plays with something for everyone.
From best-selling book adaptations, returns of works, a 25A show being brought to the mainstage for the first time, a remount of ‘Counting And Cracking’, and more.
Kicking 2024 off is ‘Tiddas’, where five women meet once a month to talk about books, lovers, and the jagged bits of life in between. Each woman carries a complex secret and one weekend, everything comes unstuck. This is part of Sydney Festival’s Blak Out. It’s based on the book by Anita Heiss.
Next up is ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ – based on the book by Cheryl Strayed. Cheryl is many things, including – to make ends meet – an online advice columnist called Sugar. What would you tell someone who was unsure about role-playing as a sexy Santa? Or wants their parents to stop putting each other down?
At a Jesuit boys’ school in 1970s Australia, Tim’s eye falls on the footy captain, John. To their mutual incredulity, they fall in love. But when they both test positive to HIV, they need to hold on tight for what’s to come. . . In ‘Holding The Man’, based on the book by Timothy Conigrave.
‘Lose To Win’ is the extraordinary journey of Mandela Mathia, who fleed his war-torn home as a child and spent many years journeying, searching, and finding his way to our stage. It’s a show which comes straight from the man who lived it.
Here and now, in the space between cultures. A chance remark takes a woman back to her teenage years, living by the ocean in Chennai, perfecting her movements for her debut performance. Meeting a young man, the universe of gods, dance and love takes an unexpected turn. ‘Nayika (A Dancing Girl)’ is co-created and co-directed by Nithya Nagarajan and Liv Satchell.
'Holding The Man'
In ‘Never Closer’, Deirdre is trapped between arguments, nations, and the lives she almost lived. When her old school friends gather in her kitchen yet again for Christmas Eve, their growing differences push to the surface a powder-keg waiting for the tiniest spark.
‘Counting And Cracking’ follows the journey of a Sri Lankan-Australian family over four generations, from 1956 to 2004. It’s the winner of 14 major awards including Helpmann Awards for Best Production and Best Direction, and returns triumphant from the Commonwealth Games and Edinburgh Festivals.
When Christopher sees Mrs Shears’ dog lying dead with a garden fork in the neck, he realises he’s going to be the chief suspect. . . So who can solve the mystery? Nobody but Christopher and his big brain, in ‘The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time’, based on the book by Mark Haddon.
How would Cleopatra, Mary Magdalene, Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Billie Jean King, Cathy Freeman and Malala Yousafzai sing the song of their lives? ‘Well-Behaved Women’ is a musical feast from Carmel Dean, where these legends (and more) are brought to life and reimagined though music. Well-behaved? As if.
Lastly for Belvoir in 2024 is ‘August: Osage County’. In Pawhuska, Oklahoma, 2007, charismatic poet-patriarch Beverly Weston has gone somewhere no one knows. His wife careers downhill into opiate addiction and the three daughters returns to their childhood home. Old wounds have to be dressed, and old scores settled. This American tragicomedy explores pain and joy passed from generation to generation.
Belvoir St Theatre’s 2024 season kicks off with ‘Tiddas’.
