Queensland Theatre has launched their 2018 season, renewing their commitment to Queenslanders and their stories, as well as bringing world premieres and exclusive shows to audiences across the state.
The 2017 season, the company’s first under the Artistic Directorship of Sam Strong, has seen record high season ticket sales, as well as the largest audience numbers in QT’s twenty-year history. “Perfect is a verb as well as an adjective,” Strong said at the season’s launch, adding that the 2017 season aimed to hold up a mirror and show us ourselves, but that the 2018 season will seek to take us outside of ourselves with a transporting combination of classic plays and exciting new works:
1. 2018 will open with Nakkiah Lui’s Black is the New White, a romantic comedy about an Aussie Christmas full of feuding families, hypocrisies, and identity and aspiration in contemporary Australia.
2. Hugh Parker dons a moustache as Richard Hannay and a cast of only four actors perform a mammoth 139 characters in 39 Steps, blending film noir and crazy comedy in Queensland Theatre’s first production at the Cremorne Theatre since its renovation.
3. Christin O’Leary will return as Malvolio (or perhaps Malvolia?) in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, also featuring an original score by Tim Finn.
 |
| Bridget Boyle (L) will direct The Longest Minute, playing from May 26, and Hugh Parker (R) will take on the lead role in 39 Steps, playing from February 24. |
4. The Longest Minute, co-presented with Jute Theatre and debase productions, will focus on the North Queensland Cowboy’s climactic premiership win in 2015 and will open first in Cairns and Townsville, the home of the Cowboys.
5. Based on Osamah Sami’s award-winning memoir of the same name, Good Muslim Boy is a story about “what unites rather than divides us…an exploration of faith in contemporary Australia,” as well as a touching portrait of a father-son relationship.
6. Australia’s classic coming-of-age mystery Jasper Jones, based on Craig Silvey’s novel and recently released as a feature film, will take audiences into the shoes of teenage protagonist Charlie as he joins forces with Jasper to solve a grisly crime.
 |
| House Husbands’ Rhys Muldoon (L) will join the cast of David Williamson’s (R) Nearer the Gods as it makes its world premiere with Queensland Theatre. |
7. Nearer the Gods, a world premiere from David Williamson, is a “thriller…but also a blackly funny drama” that follows Isaac Newton as he tries to decode God’s plan…but his clash of ego with nemesis Robert Hook may prevent him from making that world-altering discovery.
8. The 2018 season will close with a reinvigorated Hedda, bringing together three of the most dynamic women in performing arts to reimagine the Ibsen play. Written by Melissa Bubnic, directed by Queensland Theatre’s own Paige Rattray and starring award-winning actress Danielle Cormack, Hedda is set on the Gold Coast and looks to reimagine and reclaim female narratives in the canon (yesss!).
 |
| Danielle Cormack will join Queensland Theatre for Hedda in November 2018 |
Queensland Theatre will continue their focus on “leading from Queensland” in the coming year, celebrating more Queensland exclusives as well as work from around the country more state-wide engagement and a “state of origin” casting approach, repatriating former Brisbane actors. They have also renewed their commitment to gender parity and equality of representation, including no all-male design teams in the 2018 season.
You can read more about Queensland Theatre’s upcoming season and purchase season tickets now on their website. Single tickets will be available from December 4.
Backstreet Brisbane 
Leave a Reply