2026
Productions

Set in the small town in outback Queensland in the 1960s, Philip Dean’s musical comedy, of two deserted women, Vickie and Rae, both of whom have a passion for singing Country and Western classics, will start your boot scootin’ feet tapping and your heart singing along with Hank Williams and Patsy Kline.  Though very different in background and temperament, the conforming Catholic housewife and the brash, lusty and hard-living barmaid, form a bond.

First produced in Brisbane’s La Boite theatre in 1995, this witty, wild musical is set against the wider Australian landscape in a time of feminism, contraception, reds under the bed, conscription and the Vietnam War.  It is very funny and very poignant.  At “the heart of the story is loneliness, driven by the very primal fear of abandonment”. Come to Ad Astra’s black box production of Long Gone Lonesome Cowgirls: let the emotional depth of the music surprise you and these “crazy for being so lonely” women delight you.

“Truth, reality, and theatre collide on one stage.”

Step into the theatre—and into uncertainty. Six Characters in Search of an Author begins as an ordinary rehearsal, until six silhouetted figures emerge from the shadows, demanding their story be told. Unfinished, abandoned, and insistent, they carry a truth too unsettling to be contained.

With her trademark intelligence and emotional precision, Murray-Smith crafts a play that is both deeply intimate and universally resonant. Three Little Words is a compelling two hander that asks who owns a love story, and what happens when the version you have lived by is challenged. Unsettling and darkly humorous, it is a riveting examination of desire, loyalty and the cost of believing in a beautiful lie.

Brisbane 1942: a big country town jumping at shadows, never knowing if that buzz in the air is a cicada or a squadron of merciless Japanese Zeroes. World War II took the city's innocence, and that of 14-year-old Danny Fisher. Danny's dashing pilot brother has been killed in the boming of Darwin. As Danny's devastated family unravels, the teen finds a surrogate sibling in Andy, one of the American's stationed in Brisbane. The American pilot takes Danny under his wing and as the tension begins to rise between the Yank and Aussie servicemen, Danny hatches a reckless revenge plan against those who took his brother.

Hotel Sorrento is a 1995 Australian drama film directed by Richard Franklin. Three sisters reunite in the sleepy Australian town of Sorrento after a ten-year hiatus.^[1] One of the three has written a book called Melancholy which is a thinly disguised version of their lives.