Stella Miles Franklin’s pioneering 1901 novel My Brilliant Career is getting its first musical adaptation, in a production that will cap off Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2024 season.
Announced on Wednesday, it will be the first musical directed by MTC’s artistic director Anne-Louise Sarks, who has already cast her Sybylla Melvyn in Kala Gare, who played Anne Boleyn in the hit Australian production of Six.
“We’ll be injecting contemporary feminist thought into a century-old story,” Sarks said of My Brilliant Career, which will open on 7 November 2024. “We’re going to blow the roof off the Sumner [theatre],” she said, describing Gare as “the embodiment of fearless punk energy”.
With a book and music by Dean Bryant, Sheridan Harbridge and Mathew Frank, the pop-rock musical will tell the story of a free-spirited teenage girl growing up in 1890s rural Australia, forced to choose between a marriage and a life of writing.
“This is not a conventional romance. This new version is messy. It’s joyful. It’s chaotic. It gets us inside the mind of a teenager struggling to live life on her own terms,” Sarks said.
Bryant said the production will combine “the raucous energy of Six with the brashness of Fangirls and the actor/musician vibe of Once”.
“Musicals are inherently theatrical, and Sybylla is a very theatrical teenager, funny and rude and melancholy, and the form celebrates that kind of outsized personality,” he said.
“One of my favourite moments is when she throws jackaroo Frank’s proposal back in his face in an Olivia Rodrigo-esque song that manages to discuss who controls a girl’s body while being belty and fun.”
Earlier in the MTC season, Sarks will also direct Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Nikki Shiels (Sunday, The Picture of Dorian Gray) as Blanche DuBois. Mark Leonard Winter (Birdland, Halifax: Retribution) will play Stanley, with Michelle Lim Davidson (On The Beach, Torch the Place, The Newsreader) as Stella.
“Williams is capturing [a moment] where society is undergoing an enormous amount of change, and redefinition of gender and of social expectations, and there’s a real resonance there, I think, to where we are right now,” Sarks said.
“Most importantly to me: this is not a play about a crazy lady who has slightly tipped over the edge. This is a play about a woman who has experienced some trauma and then endures an act of extreme violence that is denied. It will be a fresh take.”
Another highlight will be Australia’s main-stage premiere of 2002 Pulitzer prize-winning two-hander Topdog/Underdog by US playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. A recent revival of the play on Broadway won a Tony award and was described by the Guardian as “a testament to Parks’ enduring mastery of craft, creativity and empathy”. The Australian production will be directed by Bert LaBonté and star Damon Manns as Lincoln.
The winner of this year’s Pulitzer prize for drama, Sanaz Toossi’s English – a comedy about a four Iranian adults learning to speak English in Tehran – will also be making its Australian premiere, directed by resident director Tasnim Hossain and starring Osamah Sami.
The Sydney Theatre Company and Canberra Theatre Company co-production of Julia – a play about Julia Gillard by Joanna Murray-Smith – will make its Melbourne debut in May, again starring Justine Clarke in the title role.
Other program highlights include Max McKenna and Nadine Garner starring in Australian playwright Kendall Feaver’s multi award-winning play The Almighty Sometimes; 37 by Trawlwoolway playwright Nathan Maynard, a play about the racism and Aussie rules football, which is named after Adam Goodes’ team number; and Zinnie Harris’ queer psychological thriller Meet Me at Dawn starring Sheridan Harbridge, who starred in MTC’s sellout season of Prima Facie.
MTC also announced Blak in the Room – its new collaboration with Ilbijerri Theatre Company – which will showcase new First Nations-led works created through residencies, commissions and workshops.
MTC’s full 2024 season program is available online.
