1. A COLLECTION OF WILD ANIMALS KEPT IN CAPTIVITY FOR EXHIBITION.
2. A STRANGE OR DIVERSE COLLECTION.
In a tiny derelict hut, a voracious mother, her repressed daughter and flamboyant poet son live in squalor, nourished only by competitive manoeuvring and nostalgic fantasies. Menagerie is a new production based on the extraordinary life and work of one of the giants of the American stage, Tennessee Williams. Meet the circus of Williams’ decrepit swelter; caged animals, wild at heart, with the American Dream – capitalism and hedonism – oozing through the seams of their imaginative worlds.
“Schlusser’s is emotionally highly literate theatre. While it dissects the individual and collective psyche with an analyst’s knife, it never disputes the legitimacy of feeling, never simply dismisses the irrational.”
Jana Perkovic, RealTime 115
More Press & Reviews
“…a remarkable Cubist portrait of Williams…”
Chris Boyd, The Australian
“Menagerie had a massive emotional impact on me; at the end, I found myself grappling with a wave of overwhelming sorrow, without quite knowing why. It is a kind of dreamscape that illuminates the tragedy running through the works and life of Tennessee Williams, opening it out into a meditation on the betrayal of hope in contemporary America.”
Alison Croggon, ABC Arts
“despicable…hideous…bizarre…This is the sort of thing that gives post-dramatic theatre a bad name.”
Cameron Woodhead, The Age
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Credits
Performers
Jane Badler, Kevin Hofbauer, Zahra Newman, Josh Price, Karen Sibbing, Edwina Wren
Director
Daniel Schlusser
Designer
Dale Ferguson
Sound Designers
James Paul, Darrin Verhagen
Lighting Designer
Nicola Andrews
Costume Designer
Zoe Rouse
Producer
Nicole Smith for DSE, presented by the Melbourne Theatre Company as part of NEON – A Festival of Independent Theatre
PREMIERE
May 17, 2013