Babyteeth
Plays
11 February - 18 March 2012 | Tuesday 6.30pm | Wednesday to Friday 8pm | Saturday 2pm & 8pm | Sunday 5pm
Information
Babytheeth is a darkly whimsical comedy about a teenager dying of cancer. But this isn’t a play about cancer any more than it’s a play about the violin, or being unable to get the clasp of your bra undone when you want to have illicit sex with your husband on his desk. These are the conditions, but ultimately it’s about intimacy and how people love. And how kind the world is.
From the vivid imagination of playwright Rita Kalnejais (B.C., The Hayloft Project) emerges a bittersweet story of a family rearranging itself to deal with impending death of fourteen year-old Milla (Sara West). How do they continue to manage the mundanities of living - getting to work on time, helping the neighbour change a light bulb, returning a violin bow - when their world is crumbling spectacularly?
“Babyteeth is a love story,” explains Kalnejais. “I wanted to write about how love undoes you and makes you honest. Everyone falls in love in this play. It’s a very dark comedy but I just wanted to learn about love in the face of loss and the intensity and wonder of that.”
Kalnejais has crafted a world of extraordinary and heartbreaking characters. Each one of them so unique and unusual, yet convincingly authentic while being such strange people in unfamiliar circumstances. Milla’s mother Anna (Helen Buday) is popping pills like candy and her father Henry (Greg Stone) is compulsively writing to-do lists, meanwhile Milla is falling in love with Moses (Eamon Farren) a drug addicted dog groomer, and skipping classes with her wildly eccentric Latvian violin teacher Gidon (Russell Dykstra).
Kalnejais is one of a new generation of playwrights who work seemingly effortlessly across theatrical disciplines and they are creating fresh and extraordinary theatre. Babyteeth is one of 10 new Australian works in Belvoir’s 2012 Season, a testament to the strength of playwriting in Australia at the moment and the creative development work that has been happening at Belvoir over the past five years.
Eamon Flack, Associate Director – New Projects, has been key to this creative development at Belvoir. Following his very popular production of As You Like It in December, Flack will direct Babyteeth with characteristic playfulness tempered with solemnity.
Dates 11 February to 18 March 2012
Times Tuesday 6.30pm | Wednesday to Friday 8pm | Saturday 2pm & 8pm | Sunday 5pm
Tickets Full $62 | Seniors (excluding Fri/Sat evenings) $52 | Concession $42
Venue Belvoir St Theatre | 25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills
Bookings 02 9699 3444 or the belvoir website
Venue
Belvoir Street Theatre @ 25 Belvoir Street, Surry Hills
Price
Full $62 | Seniors (excluding Fri/Sat evenings) $52 | Concession $42
Bookings
02 9699 3444 or the belvoir website