AustLit

'Well-known Melbourne playwright Angus Cerini continues his odyssey into the inner world of the dispossessed. His hallmark poeticism and savagery combine with an extraordinary lightness in this new work.'

Source: Judges' Report, The RE Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Awards: Winners 2009 website, www.slv.vic.gov.au/ross (sighted 23/06/2009)

'A rumbling, growling work of high-camp comedy and Sewellesque despair. This is outrageous, incorrigible, opinionated and disorienting.'

Source: Judges' Report, The RE Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Awards: Winners 2009 website, www.slv.vic.gov.au/ross (sighted 23/06/2009)

'A spectacular tribute to Hollywood's highs and lows, Pompeii, L.A. plummets into the anxieties and hysteria of silver screen culture.

'Meet the child star. You know the one. Used-up, spat-out and on the fast-track to self-destruction. As his life unravels after a terrible accident, Pompeii, L.A. follows his damaged young mind as it folds inwards and scrambles for an escape. Instead of relief, what he finds is a world in which reality and nightmare collide - a schizoid universe populated by Judy Garland and a host of ex-child stars who are all grown up with nowhere to go.' (Malthouse Theatre website)

'This project is written by a member of one of Melbourne's most interesting theatre collectives; Black Lung. Constructed entirely of film quotes, the script ... is the beginning of an investigation into the nature of text and narrative in live performance. It is dense and bewildering. It's also very funny ...'

Source: Judges' Report, The RE Ross Trust Playwrights' Script Development Awards: Winners 2009 website, www.slv.vic.gov.au/ross (sighted 23/06/2009)

'Sometimes ponies eat the flowers that grow in the gardens and then they're naughty. Or sometimes they eat the roses, but not the thorns. And then they're clever.' Alice Waster has returned to her parents' home in the small Australian coastal town of Tathra, where she grew up. She's returned to earth. From which, apparently, she's been gone for a long, long time.

For Alice's parents Wendy and Cleveland, their adult daughter's return means the possibility of once again being a whole family unit. The way it was when their children were young. For Tommy, Alice's brother, her return means the chance to save the life of his terminally ill little girl, Catta. For her old school friend Jeanie, Alice's return means the chance to once again believe in the magic hidden beneath the surface of everyday reality. For Alice, her return means the chance for redemption. And the possibility of falling in love.

Alice is different than she used to be. For one thing, she eats her food slower. She's also interested in other people. It seems she is trying hard to be considerate. Like a grown-up. However, a suspicion hangs in the air. The people Alice has returned for remember the cost of believing in her magic. The cost of believing in Alice. And they can't shake the feeling that there's something Alice isn't telling.' (Abstract for the 2009 reading)

Source: www.nationalplayfestival.org.au (Sighted 20/01/2009).

'Alice returns home to the sleepy seaside town of Tathra and everything seems just as she left it. So why does it seem so unfamiliar? It's as if she's forgotten everything she's ever known, everything she needs to make a settled, simple life. Her family try to help her out and she wants to settle down - really she does - but some part of her still floats way up there in the blue. Gravity's insistent tug. Welcome to the fresh and off-centre world of award-winning playwright Lally Katz, making her MTC debut with a play that looks deeply to the strangeness within. ' (Abstract for the 2011 performance)

Source: Melbourne Theatre Company website, www.mtc.com.au (sighted 29/9/10)