Comedy lovers need to get their laughing tackle in gear next year, as Melbourne Theatre Company will be serving up a glut of funny fare during its 2017 season. Of the eleven mainstage productions on offer, unveiled yesterday, seven are comedies, including a trio of new Aussie works by Melbourne-based playwrights, Joanna Murray-Smith, Eddie Perfect and Lally Katz.
It's unsurprising that MTC has shown such faith in championing home-grown work; in recent years some of the company's most successful ventures have been locally sourced. Eddie Perfect's 2013 comedy of manners, The Beast, which sends up the hipster quest for culinary pretensions, is currently on a highly successful tour, and Kiwi rocker Tim Finn's debut musical, Ladies in Black, is headed to Sydney next year following its highly acclaimed debut season.
While engaging local artists is a laudable thing, it's more than just arbitrary box-ticking. The three newly commissioned plays boast a seriously impressive pedigree with all three of the writers involved multiple award-winners, counted amongst Australia's most in-demand theatre-makers. Murray-Smith's Three Little Words is a razor-tongued send-up of contemporary coupledom, while Katz's Minnie and Liraz explores the cut-throat competitiveness of a pair of elderly Jewish bridge rivals. Perfect's Vivid White is a dystopian black comedy inspired by the roller-coaster peaks and troughs of the capricious property market.
In addition to these freshly penned comedies, 2017 will also include some of the great masterpieces of the comic canon, including Michael Frayn's multilayered farce, Noises Off, the 1950's screwball laugh-fest, Born Yesterday and Noel Coward's social satire Hay Fever.
But it's not all shits and giggles next year. As a foil for the fun, MTC Artistic director Brett Sheehy (pictured) has turned to theatre's most venerated bastion: Shakespeare. The bard's darkest and most complex tragedy, Macbeth, will offer some balance to 2017's offering for theatre lovers in search of a little more gravitas. The Shakespeare connection continues, albeit more subtly, as Australia's most hallowed thespian and the founder of Bell Shakespeare, John Bell, steps into his first contemporary role in more than two and half decades. French thriller The Father, by Florian Zeller, uses parallels with the turbulent family dynamics of King Lear, superimposed onto a modern kitchen sink drama.
Sheehy proudly claims that 2017's season will be "one of our most exciting yet," and it is certainly ambitious with the international spectrum of work on offer. Plays from six different nations - Britain, France, Ireland, America, India and, of course, Australia - will be presented during the mainstage program, which will run alongside MTC's other major initiatives, including its Women in Theatre Program, NEON NEXT, MTC Connect and Cybec Electric.
Full details of Melbourne Theatre Company's 2017 season are available now.
