Shoehorn Sonata returns to Sydney

Fresh from a triumphant 2009 season where hundreds of Sydney students enjoyed this acclaimed production, The Shoehorn Sonata returns to Newtown Theatre with evening performances for a whole new audience to enjoy.

John Misto’s award-winning play tells the powerful and compelling story of an Australian Army nurse, Bridie Cartwright, (played by Janine Penfold) who befriends an English schoolgirl Sheila Richards (Lisa Peers) in a Japanese POW camp in Borneo during World War II.

It is about their friendship, survival and eventual triumph over incredible odds.

We meet them as they are brought together by a film-maker chronicling their stories of capture by the Japanese army in 1942, whilst trying to escape Singapore.

Their reunion is filled with laughter and tears and the discovery of a shoe-horn which holds a dark secret that has kept the pair apart for half a century.

Using footage from the National Film and Sound Archive as well as his own past movie productions, director Stephen Wallace has created a visually evocative and sensitive realisation of this iconic Australian play – which features on the HSC English syllabus.

The Shoehorn Sonata plays from March 3 at the Newtown Theatre. Bookings: (02) 8507 3034.