Promising dazzling love triangles and sensational laughs when it opens at Southbank Theatre in November, Melbourne Theatre Company has announced the full cast and creative team for Simon Phillips’ upcoming production of Twelfth Night as rehearsals began this week in Melbourne.
Featuring music and songs by Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall (Muriel’s Wedding, The Musical), lavish set design and period costumes by Gabriela Tylesova, the cast includes Colin Hay (Men At Work), Frank Woodley (Lano & Woodley), Esther Hannaford (Beautiful: The Carole King Musical), Christie Whelan Browne (An Ideal Husband) and Russell Dykstra (Rake) starring as the puritanical Malvolio.
They will be joined by Caleb Alloway (Angels in America), Roderick Cairns (Romeo and Juliet), Tamsin Carroll (Miss Saigon – West End), Anthony Harkin (Kinky Boots), Richard Piper (Born Yesterday), Alec Steedman (Death of a Demi-Diva) and Lachlan Woods (Macbeth).
“I’ve managed to pull together a dream team of comic luminaries and I can’t wait to get started on this achingly funny, anarchic masterpiece,” says Phillips. “I’m thrilled to have the wonderful Russell Dykstra on board playing Malvolio, a role that will see him absolutely in his element, and to have lured Tamsin Carroll back from the West End to play Maria.”
“The icing on the cake is that music royalty Colin Hay is joining the cast to sing the lion’s share of Shakespeare’s top catalogue of songs, for which the music has been penned by the brilliant Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall, with whom I worked on Muriel’s Wedding, The Musical.”
“It’s going to be a joyous, electrifying buzz of a production, and I’m using all the bells and whistles available to me in my favourite theatre, The Sumner, to let this romantic, raucous, gender-confused comic extravaganza positively soar,” he adds.
Twins Viola and Sebastian are separated after a shipwreck and forced to fend for themselves in a strange land. Viola (disguised as a boy) falls in love with Duke Orsino, who is in love with the Countess Olivia, who meets Viola and falls in love with her, thinking she is a man. It’s all very straightforward…
Twelfth Night plays the Southbank Theatre, The Sumner: 12 November 2018 – 5 January 2019. For more information, visit: www.mtc.com.au for details.
Image: courtesy of Melbourne Theatre Company