Woof, woof!
GRADS GOES SUBURBAN
If you’ve ever owned a ’lady dog’ on heat, you’ll be fascinated to know how the neighbours in Mildred Street, Sarsaparilla, cope. Sarsaparilla is a Patrick White creation, the setting of his play, The Season at Sarsaparilla (subtitled, A Charade of Suburbia in Two Acts). It’s the next production of the Graduate Dramatic Society (GRADS), who will be staging it under the direction of award-winning John Milson at The University of Western Australia’s Dolphin Theatre from June 27th to July 12th.
It’s Mildred Street in high summer 1960, and all the ‘lady dogs’ (as Girlie Pogson calls them) are being chased by hungry males, annoying the hell out of three families – the Boyles, the Pogsons and the Knotts.
Their lives, played out in the kitchens and back yards of their adjoining houses, will both delight and confront, as White’s unflinching gaze takes in the humorous and the darker elements, as the cycle of life – courtship, mating, birth and death – grinds on.
“Nobel Prize winner White is best remembered for his many great novels, including Voss, The Tree of Man, Riders in the Chariot and A Fringe of Leaves,” said Mr Milson, ex head of Music Theatre at WAAPA and director of the opera The Barber of Seville, and the Musical South Pacific, both to open soon in Perth.
“White also wrote short stories, an autobiography, a screenplay and eight plays, of which Sarsaparilla has proved the most enduring, with regular revivals in professional and community theatres across Australia, most notably last year by the Sydney Theatre Company,” he said.
Powerful and funny, The Season at Sarsaparilla lays bare the obsessions of ordinary Aussies, as well as the secrets, and desires that lurk under their “normality.” The large ensemble cast is led by Jenny McCann, Alan Kennedy and Dean Schulze, and includes many others familiar to GRADS’ audiences. The setting is by Bethwyn Legg, costumes by Merri Ford, lighting by Robert Anderson, and bookings at BOCS (tel: 9484 1133).

reply