A comedy thriller from the author of the Olivier Award-winning Jerusalem.

1965 and nothing much is going on in the ranks of the South Bendigo Communist Party. Even the presence of young recruit Martin Porter hasn’t changed anything. But Martin is an ASIO spy and he’s about to get his new friends into serious trouble.

A series of seemingly unrelated scenes portray the ordinary frustrations of everyday life: office workers bickering, a couple committing adultery, grannies complaining about their husbands. But the scenes unfold to reveal the mistrust and dysfunction that have become the norm, in Russia and elsewhere.

Elizabeth I is tottering at death's door. Conspirators are everywhere. Lucius Bodkin, an Elizabethan stand-up comedian, becomes unwillingly involved in the political skullduggery and jiggery-pokery surrounding the ailing queen.

A classic satire of provincial bureaucracy, which only saw the stage after the personal intervention of Tsar Nicholas I. A small, corrupt Russian town receives a letter informing them of the imminent visit of a government inspector travelling incognito. When a passing civil servant is mistaken for the inspector, panic soon sets in.

Lewis has recently left university and takes up a job in a mental institution directing Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. Lewis, the non-participant, becomes emotionally involved with his actors' lives as his operatic production lurches forward and anti-Vietnam protests take place in the streets outside.