BOYS OWN McBETH
16-18 December 2010 at the EARL ARTS CENTRE
Tasmanian Premiere Season of a really rotten tragedy
Terry Shakespeare is really the school old boy – he’s 42. He’s been in fifth form for 26 years and his two children Dopey and SS are in the same class – but he’s not silly… he’s turned staying at school forever into a tax dodge. Finally the school becomes desperate to offload Terry and his boys, so the headmaster hatches a plot to get rid of Shakespeare. If he passes they can finally boot him out. So they make him direct the school play Macbeth. In a bizarre send-up of the happiest days of your life, the authors have assembled a cast of swots, crawlers, stirrers and dunces into a pantomime which took the Australian public by storm, both for its outrageous antics and appealing music and, more seriously, its glimpse of the doubts and confusion which haunt the school-leaver.
Boy’s Own McBeth toured Australia and the US from 1979 until 1982. It was the longest running Australian written musical ever staged with more than 600 performances and was only eclipsed in the 1990’s by The Boy From Oz.
DIRECTORS Liz Bennett & Belinda J king
MUSICAL DIRECTOR Matt Dudfield
TERRY SHAKESPEARE Travis Hennessy
DOPEY SHAKESPEARE Tom Richards
SS SHAKESPEARE Frank Kerr
CHARLES HUNT Bart Welch
CLIFFORD TOBIAS Danny Gibson
MORRIE McBETH Shannyn Foon
ELSTON Solomon Walker-Bowd
By Grahame Bond and Jim Burnett. Presented by arrangement with David Spicer Productions www.davidspicer.com
