SEASON ONE '08

MALTHOUSE THEATRE AND
BELL SHAKESPEARE PRESENT

VENUS & ADONIS

BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
DIRECTOR MARION POTTS
DRAMATURGE MARYANNE LYNCH
SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER ANNA TREGLOAN
LIGHTING DESIGNER PAUL JACKSON
COMPOSER ANDRÉE GREENWELL
SOUND DESIGNER DAVID FRANZKE

CAST MELISSA MADDEN GRAY, SUSAN PRIOR
WITH MUSIC PERFORMED LIVE BY
BEN HAUPTMANN, DAVID HEWITT, RYAN WILLIAMS

In 1593 William Shakespeare has a hit on his hands. London is in the throes of the Black Death and the playhouses are all shut up, along with most else in the city. Now struggling to earn a living, young Will sets himself the task of rewriting Ovid’s story of Venus and her lover Adonis, and the result is one of the most celebrated carnal poems of desire and death.

In its day, it’s said, Venus and Adonis was the reading of ‘courtesans, lascivious nuns, adulterous housewives, or libidinous young girls’ and the well-thumbed text of university students.

The story is simple. Goddess meets Boy, Goddess wants Boy, Goddess (in Shakespeare’s version) doesn’t get Boy; instead he turns into a Flower. But of course Shakespeare knows that life is never quite that straightforward - he gives people what they want but also more than they bargain for. And, as generations of readers can attest, the licence to be aroused.

In this sparkling new response to Shakespeare’s most popular poem, Venus is a woman with a past who is having trouble with her future. Directed by 2006 Helpmann Award winner and Bell Shakespeare Mind’s Eye Artistic Director, Marion Potts (Othello), this production brings together Melissa Madden Gray (intimate of Meow Meow) and Susan Prior as a Hydra-headed Venus who is ardent, wilful, wanton, terrifying…but also wondering where the hell she’s heading. Desire is only half the story.

A VISION THROUGH MIND’S EYE
Shakespeare provides us with an inexhaustible repository of ideas. Debate is found within almost every speech and a new piece of theatre in every image. Mind’s Eye, Bell Shakespeare’s new development arm, is set to harness these images and delve into their alternate worlds, centre-stage. This first-ever collaboration between Malthouse Theatre and Bell Shakespeare has delivered a steamy night in the theatre and the lingering memory of love’s bittersweet frustrations.