Company B 09 Season

Company B — based at Sydney's Belvoir Street Theatre — will kick off its 2009 season with a production by the Belarus Free Theatre, which the London Daily Telegraph proposed as the bravest theatre company in the world.

Those becoming Company B season ticket holders by 21 November have a chance of a return trip to New York for two (value $6000), including some show tickets.

The Belarus Free Theatre doesn’t officially exist. It sprang to life in 2005 in response to the authoritarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has viciously suppressed freedom of expression and political opposition. Company members have been evicted, beaten and arrested. To see them perform in Belarus you put your name on a secret list and wait for an SMS telling you a time and place on the city outskirts. Then you’re bussed to a makeshift theatre in a basement, a café, even a cemetery. Being Harold Pinter is wild, anarchic theatre at its purest. Extracts from Pinter’s plays and his Nobel Prize speech transform into a harrowing account of artistic and political repression in Europe’s last dictatorship. Funny and menacing, this is a powerful instance of life imitating art. 7–11 Jan & 28 Jan–1 Feb.

§ The Pianist, based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman; original concept by Mikhail Rudy

In September 1939, concert pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman was midway through a performance of Chopin’s Nocturne in D Flat Major for Polish Radio when the Nazis pulled the power. Six years later, after an infernal odyssey of survival during which he saved his sanity by playing silently on a tabletop every day, Szpilman returned to Polish Radio and completed his recital. The Pianist is his memoir of those six years. Half a century down the track another great concert pianist, the internationally acclaimed Mikhail Rudy, read Szpilman’s memoir and dreamt up a sublime retelling of the story. Part concert, part play, The Pianist is a duet for two Szpilmans: Rudy on piano and a solo actor recounting the story. 16–27 Jan.

Salim likes London. He got his medical degree, had an affair with a man and wrote a successful novel about it. But now Saddam Hussein’s gone and Salim’s going home to get married. Sexy, funny and thrilling, this is life in Iraq as we never get to see it. Salim and his friends drink, love, argue, hope and tumble between escaping and succumbing as their country staggers to its feet again. 7 Feb–22 Mar.

§ The Man from Mukinupin, by Dorothy Hewitt (co-production with the Melbourne Theatre Company)

This is musical comedy and wheatbelt Shakespeare rolled into one, bursting with sunlight and song, revelling in darkness, peopled with a rabble of broken-down vaudevillians, lingerie salesmen and war heroes. The Man from Mukinupin is one of Australia’s great theatrical creations from one of our great poets and ratbags, Dorothy Hewett. In dusty Mukinupin, Jack Tuesday loves Polly Perkins and Polly loves Jack. But when night comes it’s Touch Of The Tar who tickles Jack’s drunken fancy. Through this double-Mukinupin, by day and night, Hewett gives us a twin vision of black and white Australia clinging together for all we’re worth. 28 Mar–17 May.

Ruben Guthrie is on fire. He’s 29, he’s the Creative Director of a cutting-edge advertising agency, he’s engaged to a Czech supermodel and Sydney is his oyster. He pours himself a drink to celebrate, a drink to work, a drink to sleep and one spectacular night he drinks so much he thinks he can fly. Ruben Guthrie is Brendan Cowell’s brutally honest comedy about work, family and excess. This is a special play which taps a deep vein of Australian life and asks, is it unAustralian to refuse a drink? 23 May–5 Jul.

The Siege of Leningrad, 1942. In a broken-down apartment in the middle of one of the longest and most destructive battles in human history, two teenage boys fall in love with the same girl. Passionate, terrible and wonderful, Alexei Arbuzov’s The Promise is a rediscovered masterpiece of the twentieth century. Arbuzov covers thirteen years in the lives of these young lovers, filling their hopeless situation with hope and watching them grapple with the idea that the future is always a better place. 11 Jul–23 Aug.

Otto Fallon is a former hairdresser and boy-band producer. Now he’s a fundraiser and problem solver for New Labour. Meredith Guest is the Home Secretary. Suzette’s her teenage daughter and she’s about to bring everything crashing down. Hare lets fly with a thrilling narrative and savage wit worthy of the great Restoration comedies. His menagerie of the privileged skates through a world of mirrors and high hypocrisy where British Labour has suspended its idealism and become the opposite of itself. Written out of deep anger, Gethsemane asks how we maintain any sense of morality in a world so defined by price and affluence. But glowing at its core is a tentative sense of promise for the future … 29 Aug–18 Oct.

Samuel Beckett has given us some of the most unforgettable theatrical creations of the last hundred years – wondrous vaudevilles of despair and loneliness. But hovering amongst his ruined world is the little voice of a little woman speaking with insistent optimism: Winnie in Happy Days. She’s half-buried in a mound of earth. Her husband lives in a hole in the ground behind her. The sun beats down stronger every day. She has a revolver in her handbag in case it all gets too much – and often it very nearly does. But there’s always the chance that, despite all the obstacles, love might still conquer her little mountain. 4 Nov–16 Dec.

§ The Book of Everything, by Guus Kuijer, adapted by Richard Tulloch (co-production with Kim Carpenter's Theatre of Image)

Thomas is nine and he’s started writing a book. His father says all important books are about God. Even so, Thomas writes down all the fascinating things he sees that other people seem to ignore: tropical fish in the canal, frogs in the letterbox, trumpeting sparrows … He also writes his greatest wish: When I grow up, I’m going to be happy. Featuring Jesus, the angels, the Bottombiter, the startling Mrs Van Amersfoort and a beautiful girl with a leather leg, Guus Kuijer’s magnificently humble story grabs your heart and challenges your mind, no matter how old you are. 27 Dec–31 Jan.

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