
**Restricted view seats are still available for $20. Please call our Box Office team during office hours at (03) 9685 5111 to book tickets.**
The beloved Australian classic novel and groundbreaking film comes to the mainstage for the first time.
Josie Alibrandi is in her final year of high school. Whip-smart and aspirational, she is a third-generation Italian teenager and scholarship kid, with the shadow of a family curse and a penchant for rulebreaking. Juggling grades, boys, and the claustrophobia of an overbearing nonna and saintly mother, Josie’s life becomes tangled in the webs of class, identity, and family history as she finds her place in a changing world.
Iconic novel and cult movie, Looking for Alibrandi is the honest and empowered portrait of 1990s Mediterranean culture that spoke for the first time about systemic racism in Australia from a migrant perspective. It defined a generation and to this day resonates with those caught in the stranglehold of identity and othering in this country. Director Stephen Nicolazzo (Loaded, Merciless Gods) brings Melina Marchetta’s best-selling novel to the mainstage for the first time, where Vidya Rajan’s adaptation will join three generations of women in a passionate, heart wrenching, and unmissable rendering of the Australian classic.
Starring Chanella Macri (Australian Realness), Lucia Mastrantone, and Jennifer Vuletic (Because The Night) as the Alibrandi women with Ashley Lyons, Hannah Monson, and John Marc Desengano (The Lockdown Monologues).
Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir present Looking for Alibrandi. Malthouse is supported by COVID-19 Arts Sustainability Fund - an Australian Government initiative.
Campaign image: Kristian Gehradte
Production Images: Jeff Busby & Tamarah Scott



WRITER
Vidya Rajan

Director
Stephen Nicolazzo

SET & COSTUME DESIGNER
Kate Davis

COMPOSER & SOUND DESIGNER
Daniel Nixon

LIGHTING DESIGNER
Katie Sfetkidis

CHOREOGRAPHER
Rosa Voto

CAST
John Marc Desengano

CAST
Ashley Lyons

CAST
Chanella Macri

CAST
Lucia Mastrantone

CAST
Hannah Monson

CAST
Jennifer Vuletic

UNDERSTUDY
Clarisse Bonello

STAGE MANAGER
Cecily Rabey

ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER
Harry Dowling
MUSICIANS /
Rosa Voto, Renato Vacirca
CULTURAL & LANGUAGE CONSULTANT /
VOCAL COACH /
Matt Furlani
DIALECT COACH /
Paulo Bongiovanni
BESEN PLACEMENT (COMPOSITION & SOUND DESIGN) /
Aiv Puglielli
BESEN PLACEMENT (SET & COSTUME DESIGN) /
Karine Larché
TRANSLATION /
Moreno Giovannoni
DESIGN INTERN /
Casey Harper-Wood
DIRECTOR INTERNS /
Tansy Gorman, Steph Lee
Event & ticketing details
Accessibility
Performance Times
Event notes
WARNINGS
This production contains occasional coarse language, stage violence, references to suicide, smoking of herbal cigarettes, sexual references, staged intimacy, partial nudity, allusion to domestic violence, and haze. For more detailed information, see our full list of content warnings here.
DURATION
2 hours, 20 minutes (including a 20 minute interval)