Siren | |
---|---|
Written by | David Williamson |
Characters | 5M, 2F |
Date premiered | 1990 |
Original language | English |
Genre | social comedy |
Siren is a 1990 play by Australian playwright David Williamson. [1]
In a central Coast motel room, Liz has been hired to seduce Billy Nottle, a local councillor suspected of accepting bribes from developers.
Williamson gave the world premiere rights to Melbourne, which upset the Sydney Theatre Company, who had put on Emerald City with great success. A compromise was reached where the play opened in Sydney and Melbourne simultaneously, but Melbourne began 15 minutes earlier. [2] [3] The Sydney production was directed by Richard Wherret, the Melbourne one by Graeme Blundell. The Sydney production starred Andrea Moor who had been in Emerald City. [4]
Reviewing the 1990 Sydney production the Sunday Herald said "it cannot be counted among his successes." [5] Sydney Morning Herald said "it's the writing, line by line, that lacks finesse." [6]
Reviewing the 1990 Melbourne production The Age called it "a dismal affair... cynical, regressive and uninvolving." [7]
John Hadley Thompson, AM is an Australian actor and a major figure of Australian cinema, particularly Australian New Wave. He is best known for his role as a lead actor in several acclaimed Australian films, including such classics as The Club (1980), Sunday Too Far Away (1975), The Man from Snowy River (1982) and Petersen (1974). He won Cannes and AFI acting awards for the latter film.
David Keith Williamson is an Australian playwright, who has also written screenplays and teleplays. He became known in the early 1970s with his political comic drama Don's Party, and other well-known plays include The Club, Travelling North, and Emerald City.
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The Eleventh Hour is a 1912 Australian silent film. It is considered a lost film.
Struck Oil is an 1874 play set during the American Civil War and a 1919 Australian silent film, now considered lost. The play, which introduced Maggie Moore to Australian theatre-goers, was popular with the Australian public and the basis of J. C. Williamson's success as a theatre entrepreneur. A film based on the play and directed by Franklyn Barrett was produced in 1919.
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James Allison was a theatre manager in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne. He engaged and managed local and overseas opera, drama, circus, minstrel and variety companies throughout the Australasian colonies.
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May Hollinworth was an Australian theatre producer and director, former radio actress, and founder of the Metropolitan Theatre in Sydney. The daughter of a theatrical producer, she was introduced to the theatre at a young age. She graduated with a science degree, and worked in the chemistry department of the University of Sydney, before being appointed as director of the Sydney University Dramatic Society, a post she held from 1929 until 1943
Robert Brough was born in England to a family prominent in literature and the theatre. He had a notable career as actor and manager in Australia.
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Mary Gladstane was an Irish-American actress of the 19th-century who had a considerable career in Australia, along with her husband and manager, L. M. Bayless.
Fanny Emily Mary Hooper, known as Minnie Hooper, was an Australian dance instructor and ballet mistress. She has been credited, with Jennie Brenan and Minnie Everett, with maintaining the high standard of Australian dance and ballet in the 1920s, between the reigns of Emilia Pasta and Anna Pavlova. She had a long series of contracts with J. C. Williamson's and conducted classes at her dance studio on Pitt Street, Sydney.