Q launches 2010 subscription season

A collection of excellent plays and top-line stars will head to Sydney’s greater west next year, with the Q Theatre announcing its 2010 subscription season on Monday.

What better way to see some of Australia’s most respected and best loved actors, than in your own backyard? That’s the marketing line the Q is using to ensure audiences see theatre locally and don’t always travel into the city.

Garry McDonald, Henri Szeps, Joan Sydney, Alex Dimitriades, Shane Porteous, Ron Haddrick and the Wharf Revue Team are just a few of the big names treading the boards at the Q Theatre in Penrith next year.

The season kicks off in March with the dazzling, laugh-a-minute comedy Dirty Dusting starring three grand dames of Australian stage & screen – Joan Sydney, Ann Phelan and Maggie King.

Two of this country’s most loved actors Garry McDonald and Henri Szeps reunite on stage for the award-winning drama Halpern & Johnson, whilst popular mountains-based actor Shane Porteous returns to the Q stage with Ron Haddrick  in the hilarious comedy Codgers.

Alex Dimitriades and Danny Mitchell star in Rain Man – a beautiful and intimate stage production of the Oscar winning film.

The 2010 season also sees the critically acclaimed Peace Train – The Cat Stevens Story starring Darren Coggan make its way to the Q, and of course the outrageously funny Wharf Revue team of Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe and Phillip Scott will be back again with their annual dose of razor-sharp satire and irreverent humour.

Most notably, the 2010 season sees the Q Theatre Company’s important return to producing, with the premiere production of Mash Up.

Take three actors, a sound artist and a video artist, give them 28 poems from seven of Australia’s most celebrated poets and what do you get? A new, contemporary theatre work featuring the poems of AB (Banjo) Paterson, Kenneth Slessor,  Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood, Peter Skrzynecki and Douglas Stewart.

The Q’s return to producing is a significant step as the production arm has been clouded since the controversial departure of former Artistic Director David Hollywood in 2007.

One of the Q’s most respected productions, Sunday In The Park With George, featured Hollywood at the helm.