Williamson’s famous play about the uses and abuses of managerial power, which in 1976 foreshadowed the great changes that Australian football has since endured, proves even more prescient since the rise and fall of Super League. This is a play set behind the scenes, a head-on tackle of brawn versus bureaucracy.

Nowra’s vibrant play is set inside a psychiatric institution where Lewis, a university student, has been employed to direct a show. He becomes emotionally involved with his patients-cum-actors as his operatic production lurches forward and anti-Vietnam protests rage outside.

Extract

First staged in 1955, no play has been more important to the history of Australian theatre than Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. Twenty years later, Lawler returned to his lovable Carlton household and created two more plays: Kid Stakes and Other Times. He also revised Summer of the Seventeenth Doll to create a definitive version of the text. Together these plays tell the full story of a seventeen-year romance which ends in tragic disillusion.

Hedda Gabler is a woman of spirit and guile, fighting to be more than someone's daughter and someone else's wife. But the seasons change, and her battles give way to an ominous composure as she prepares to transcend her imprisonment and determine her own fate.

Andrew Upton unravels the mystery of Ibsen's masterpiece and constructs a psychological thriller of cinematic intensity and power. His superb adaptation gives Australian readers a fresh and exciting insight into one of the great dramatic works of modern literature.

Adapted by Andrew Upton for the Sydney Theatre Company.

In the Company of Actors documents taking the STC production of the play to New York.