Hello Fiona and Martin, while you are in Melbourne, your parents and sister thought it would be nice to send you on an outing to celebrate your birthday early… that way you have no extra baggage and no postage to cph… win win!

if you are amenable, please select from one of the options below and they will make arrangements.

All options include luisasitting + a ride to and from springvale station + loaded myKi loans

Option 1

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Playhouse: 7pm Weekdays - 2pm & 7:30pm Saturday

Sydney Theatre Company’s ground-breaking one-person show makes its Melbourne debut, seamlessly blending live video and theatre to bring 26 characters to life.

Hailed as a “dizzyingly beautiful tour de force” (The Guardian) and “a theatrical coup to rival the best of Robert Lepage or Complicité” (Sydney Morning Herald), The Picture of Dorian Gray is a monumental work of Australian theatre and an odyssey of theatrical storytelling, featuring an awe-inspiring performance from Eryn Jean Norvill that is “out of this world” (Limelight).

Building on a career-long fascination with theatrical innovation and spectacular reinventions of classic stories (Suddenly Last Summer, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui), Sydney Theatre Company Artistic Director Kip Williams has written and directed an adaption of Wilde’s century-old fable of beauty and a deal with the devil that is a magnificent mirror to our times. Now Williams returns with long-time collaborator Norvill and a team of some of Australia’s finest theatre-makers, to reconjure a production “that will surely be remembered as one of the greatest ever seen on an Australian stage” (Time Out).

This one-person show is an Olympic act of performance: a sole performer nimbly shapeshifting to play all of the dark tale’s 26 characters in an audacious cascade of theatrical transformations. A scintillating mix of cutting-edge contemporary theatre design, lush period drama, and astonishing live video, this vibrantly contemporary adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray is gripping, funny and has rightfully been celebrated as “genius” (Limelight).

Option 2

Vasily Petrenko conducts Elgar

Hamer Hall - Fri 15th 7pm & Sat 16th 2pm

Lauded Russian-British conductor Vasily Petrenko joins the MSO for this varied program inspired by English music and literature across the centuries.

Early 20th century English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams composed incidental music to Aristophanes’s ancient Greek Comedy The Wasps – an absurd story of an old man addicted to the law courts in a quirky satire of the Greek judicial system. Vaughan Williams’s overture evokes this zany humour, with buzzing insects and playful passages giving way to soaring pastoral melodies.

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” is probably the most famous line from John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost. It’s from this 1667 masterpiece that Australian composer Matthew Laing draws inspiration to depict the bassoon, performed by MSO Principal Bassoon Jack Schiller, as a poetic antihero of the orchestra: subjected to heaven; at peace in hell.

Elgar’s Second Symphony is what the composer himself described as the height of artistic achievement: an ‘absolute’ work – that is, a piece not based on a story or theme, but composed for the sake of music itself. Through passages of wistfulness, gusto, spookiness, and soft beauty, Vasily Petrenko, Gramophone’s 2017 Artist of the Year, brings energy and critical accolades to Elgar’s self-described ‘passionate pilgrimage’ of the soul.

Option 3

William Barton: Sky Songs

Hamer Hall - Fri 22nd Jul - 7:30pm

Apii Thatini Ma Murtu - We carry a coolamon and sing to country together

Come with us on an incredible musical journey, as master musician William Barton transports the audience to a sonic world, transcending time and space.

Joined by song woman and wordsmith Aunty Dalmae Barton, composer and violin virtuoso, Véronique Serret, Australian music legend Iva Davies and surrounded by the symphonic landscape of John Foreman’s magnificent 60-piece Australian Pops Orchestra, William’s powerfully moving music will take you to the deep past, the future, to the majestic Australian landscape and the almost unimaginable wonders of the cosmos.

William Barton is one of Australia’s most celebrated musicians. Composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and one of Australia’s leading didgeridoo players, William is a Kalkadunga man whose music is inspiring, uplifting, and powerful.

This is a very special Melbourne premiere event, not to be missed.