Change is in the air as State Theatre launches 2025 season
A stage adaptation of the popular coming-of-age story Looking for Alibrandi, Tennessee Williams’ American classic The Glass Menagerie and a festival of new South Australian plays join the return season of The Dictionary of Lost Words as highlights of State Theatre’s 2025 season.
The line-up of seven plays revealed today marks the final season of State Theatre Company South Australia’s outgoing artistic director Mitchell Butel, who says it is “full of works about making a change and making a difference”.
Author Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi – the story of a third-generation Italian teenager whose life is turned upside down in her final year of high school – was originally turned into a film in 2000 starring Pia Miranda as Josie Alibrandi. The theatrical adaptation State Theatre will present is by Brink Productions; it was written by Vidya Rajan and originally staged by Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre and Sydney’s Belvoir, becoming one of the latter’s top-selling shows of the past decade.
Stephen Nicolazzo, who directed the original production and is now artistic director of Adelaide-based Brink, will direct Looking for Alibrandi at the Dunstan Playhouse in May, with young actor Chanella Macri in the lead role. Brink’s website says the story defined a generation, describing it as an “honest and empowered portrait of 1990s Mediterranean culture that spoke for the first time about systemic racism in Australia from a migrant perspective”.
Susie Youssef and Emily Taheny will star in Emily Steel’s new black comedy Housework.New Australian stories also form part of State Theatre’s 2025 season, which begins in February with the world premiere of a black comedy by Adelaide playwright Emily Steel, known for works including Euphoria, The Garden and the multi-award-winning 19 Weeks.
Steel’s Housework follows a government minister and her two female staffers during a week in Canberra, with the company saying it is a “deep dive in the corridors of power with shades of Veep, The Thick of It and The Hollowmen”. It will be directed by Shannon Rush (The Puzzle, Welcome to Your New Life), with a cast led by actor-comedians Susie Youssef and Emily Taheny.
Six other South Australian writers – Piri Eddy, Anthony Nocera, Sarah Peters, Alex Vickery-Howe, Nicola Watson and Alexis West – will showcase their new original works in a festival of new South Australian plays titled Great Australian Bites at Norwood’s Odeon Theatre in November-December. The eclectic collection of stories ranges from West’s Culture Slap, about a Black woman “stomping, tripping and fumbling” her way through the process of protocol, to Nocera’s Log Boy, “a cut-throat horror comedy about contemporary gay life”, and Peters’ Lost Socks and Polka Dots, a one-person verbatim play based on interviews with people in residential aged care.
Three of the plays in the season have been announced previously, including a return season of the live adaptation of local author Pip Williams’ bestselling historical novel The Dictionary of Lost Words, which was State Theatre’s highest-selling show ever in the Dunstan Playhouse during its premiere season in 2023 and will return from April 3-17 as well as touring nationally.
Butel will direct the State Theatre and Melbourne Theatre Company co-production of American playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s Tony Award-winning musical Kimberly Akimbo (Her Majesty’s Theatre, July), which follows the roller-coaster journey of a teenager with a rare genetic ageing condition and will star Marina Prior, Casey Donovan, Christie Whelan Browne and Nathan O’Keefe, while Dear Son: Letters and Reflections From First Nations Fathers will use story and song to bring to life author Thomas Mayo’s book of heartfelt letters written by First Nations men to their sons.
Marina Prior and Casey Donovan will take to the stage in the musical Kimberly Akimbo.Rush will be back in the director’s seat for State Theatre’s final play of 2025: Tennessee Williams’ semi-autobiographic American classic The Glass Menagerie, to be performed by a cast including South Australian actresses Ksenja Logos and Kathryn Adams.
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Butel will leave the company this month to return to his hometown of Sydney and take up the position of artistic director at Sydney Theatre Company.
“I have loved my time with this company and community over the past six years and I hope the shows we’ve been able to create and share in that time have changed you and left their mark,” he says in a statement accompanying the 2025 season launch.
The company is currently in the process of seeking to recruit a new artistic director.
State Theatre Company SA’s full 2025 season is online now.