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Jane Campion Wins NSW Premier’s Literary Prize

The New South Wales Premier’s literary awards winners were announced last night among them Dame Jane Campion was announced the joint recipient of the Betty Rowland Prize for Script writing. The fourth episode of TOP OF THE LAKE: CHINA GIRL entitled Birthday was written by Campion and co-creator Gerard Lee. Here’s what the judges had to say:

The Birthday episode script effectively combines reinvented elements of the thriller, the melodrama and film poetry to create a mode of storytelling in a heightened register — entirely appropriate to the depiction of a world in which nothing is quite as it seems. Along the way, the writers of Birthday develop a range of complex women characters rarely seen on our screens.

Campion and Lee share this prestigious award with Deep Water: The Real Story written by Amanda Blue and Jacob Hickey.

See the full list of winners here.

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE is welcomed back to the Lyric Hammersmith

Praise for Andrew Bovell’s THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE in its successful return season at London’s Lyric Hammersmith.

“Easily the finest production I have ever seen at the Lyric Hammersmith” – Evening Standard

“An articulate piece of drama about the dangers of unarticulated emotions.” – The Telegraph

“This production’s searing honesty about family relationships stays with you long after the curtain falls.” – RadioTimes

Muriel’s Wedding the Musical: A resounding hit

Congratulations to the Muriel’s Wedding: the Musical team. After opening night this Saturday the reviews are flooding in. Here are just some of the terrific responses:

“Muriel’s Wedding feels like the complete package: a beloved film seamlessly updated; a central character who retains all the ambiguities that made you root for her in the first place; a conspicuously inventive score peppered with classic pop hits, and a mainstage debut that will be talked about for years.” SMH

“Director Simon Phillips has the show running on a smooth rail and has cast the show impeccably.” – SMH

“Hogan and director Simon Phillips have made this story work superbly on stage, from their thoughtful inclusion of ABBA as Muriel’s unlikely guardians, to the several tragedies of the second act, to their handling of all the iconic lines” Daily Review

“Under the ebullient guidance of director Simon Phillips, Muriel’s Wedding arrives on the musical stage with raucous, ribald, uninhibited ­energy and an unshakeable belief in the concept that more is more, particularly in the show’s manic first half.”  – The Australian

“The sets and costumes by Tylesova are so good they are almost another character in themselves. The audience actually gasped at the first sight of Sydney on the stage, and Bill Heslop’s architectural model for coastal overdevelopment was hilarious, featuring a skyscraper in the shape of a half-peeled banana.” – News.com.au

“Pushing the action along is a clever set design by Gabriela Tylesova that mixes the prosaic with the poetic.” – The Guardian

Tommy Lee Jones Joins STONER

Andrew Bovell’s adaption of John William’s book STONER adds another star to the list as Tommy Lee Jones joins the cast. To be directed by ATONEMENT’s Joe Wright STONER follows a dirt-poor farmer (Casey Affleck) turned academic who emerges as an unlikely existential hero while making his way through the first half of the 20th century.

Read more here.

Thing I Know To Be True – UK tour success

Andrew Bovell’s THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE continues its tour of the UK, charming audiences as it goes.

“Those of a sentimental turn of mind may find Things I Know To Be True to be a heart-warming and reassuring story of family life as lived today – a familiar story of solidly working class parents struggling to make a better life for their children. Those of a more cynical bent might connect with the realisation that the ties that bind families together survive only at the expense of truth, honesty and ambition, through compromise, lies, personal suppression and sheer bloody-mindedness. Either of these approaches to the narrative delivers satisfying results: family is wonderful and awful at the same time in equal measure.”

Read the full four star review here.

New Pizza: Stefano Manfredi’s guide to new wave pizza

Stefano Manfredi has been researching pizza for for many years, the result is his book NEW PIZZA.

Charting the new wave movement that re-imagines pizza making in a modern context, Manfredi notes “It’s a movement back to pizza’s origins, before industrial flour milling, while at the same time using modern advances in stone milling, machinery and oven technologies.”

Read more here.

Missy Higgins Joins Miracle City

Heralded as an uncovered musical theatre gem, Sydney Opera House audiences will have the chance to catch Nick Enright and Max Lambert’s acclaimed musical Miracle City. 

After a smash season at the Hayes Theatre in 2014 Miracle City will arrive at the Opera House in October, this time with Missy Higgins in tow.

Set in the early 1990s, at the height of televangelism, Miracle City tells the story of the Truswells, a family with a dream to build a religious theme park, and the extreme lengths the patriarch, Ricky Truswell, will go to in order to make their dream a reality.

Read more here.

Found: Muriel’s Wedding BFF

“Sydney Theatre Company and Global Creatures announced today that Australian actor Madeleine Jones will play the role of Muriel’s best friend Rhonda in the world premiere of Muriel’s Wedding The Musical.”

PJ Hogans iconic film adapted to the stage by the writer himself will open at STC’s Roslyn Packer Theatre in  November this year.

Read more here.

Becoming a Screenwriter

Writer Andrew Bovell has put pen to paper, this time to discuss his experienced of becoming a writer for screen.

Producer Jan Chapman will officially launch the paper Putting words in their mouths: The playwright and screenwriter at work on August 10 at Sydney Theatre Company. The event will be hosted by STC artistic director Kip Williams.

In the meantime you can preview Andrew’s work here.

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