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Melbourne Theatre Company Artistic Director Simon Phillips ... “Melbourne will get a truly thrilling selection of new Australian works."

MTC opens new home

The MTC Theatre (above) represents an exciting new architectural addition to Melbourne’s Southbank Cultural Precinct and a new era in the history of the MTC.

Home to two performance spaces, the 500-seat Sumner Theatre and the 160-seat Lawler Studio, the building is the result of a creative collaboration between architect Ian McDougall and Simon Philips, MTC’s Artistic Director.

The Sumner will be Australia’s most technically advanced drama theatre.

The exterior of the building comprises of a series of white cubes set against a black background that appear to shift as the viewer moves around the building.

Just like theatre, as the sun comes up the magic of the building recedes, but at night, lit by specially focused floodlights, the building bursts into life in a glowing illusionistic display.

It was built in a partnership between the University of Melbourne and the Victorian Government.

Melbourne Theatre Company Artistic Director Simon Phillips has announced that six plays in the 2009 season would be performed at the new MTC Theatre on Southbank Boulevard, and that they would all be Australian works.

“2009 is a landmark year in our new landmark building. With the new 500-seat Sumner Theatre and the 150-seat Lawler Studio to add to the Arts Centre theatres the breadth of work opens up enormously. For the first time in our history we will have the right theatre for any play and any sized audience imaginable,” said Phillips.

The 2009 season comprises 12 plays in total including three world premieres, five new West End and Broadway hits, the revival of a British classic and a Christmas revue.

Commenting on the season Phillips said, “Melbourne will get a truly thrilling selection of new Australian works and Australian premieres of plays that have proven themselves to be triumphs overseas. Everyone at the Company is in a state of excitement and anticipation as we launch this particularly adventurous and highly theatrical season.”

The new $55 million MTC Theatre, which has been 15 years in the planning, will open on Tuesday 27 January with the world premiere of Poor Boy by Matt Cameron and Tim Finn, and starring Guy Pearce.

The state-of-the-art Theatre marks the beginning of a new era in the history of MTC and allows it to reassert its status as one of Australia’s flagship performing arts companies. The complex also includes function and VIP rooms, a café and bars.

In addition to Poor Boy, the other Australian plays in the season are:

§ Andrew Bovell’s epic new work, When the Rain Stops Falling, one of the hits of the 2008 Adelaide Festival.

§ The world premiere of Rockabye, a new satirical comedy by Joanna Murray-Smith set in the world of celebrity, starring Nicki Wendt.

§ The world premiere of Realism by Paul Galloway, winner of the 2008 Wal Cherry Award for Best New Play, a backstage farce set in 1930s Soviet Union stars Miriam Margolyes.

§ A revival of the Australian classic, Dorothy Hewett’s The Man from Mukinupin, starring Amanda Muggleton

§ A Christmas revue by Max Gillies and Guy Rundle, Godzone, which features the Reverend Rudd of Rudd Ministries.

And there are six outstanding international plays in the season:

§ Grace by UK playwright Mick Gordon and philosopher AC Grayling is a moving and thought-provoking drama and will star Noni Hazlehurst in her Melbourne stage début.

§ Bruce Beresford will make his theatre directing début with the madcap Hollywood comedy Moonlight and Magnolias.

§ Joan Didion’s stage adaptation of her best-selling memoir The Year of Magical Thinking is presented in an acclaimed STC production directed by Cate Blanchett and starring Robyn Nevin.

§ Award-winning Broadway hit, August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, an American family drama, will be the biggest production of the year and will feature an ensemble led by Robyn Nevin, Jane Menelaus and Robert Menzies.

§ Yasmina Reza’s (Art, Life x 3) new savage comedy God of Carnage is about two supposedly civilised couples will star Pamela Rabe.

§ Harold Pinter’s first major play, the post-war classic The Birthday Party, will be revived in a production directed by Julian Meyrick.