AussieTheatre.com

February 19, 2008

 

Andrew Upton's play Riflemind, which played as part of the Sydney Theatre Company's (STC) 2007 subscription season, may take to the stage in London in the near future, with negotiations underway between the STC and the famed Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG).

According to The Australian, ATG's Creative Director, Howard Panter, is also in negotiations with Upton and Cate Blanchett - the artistic directors of STC - about co-productions of other plays. He said he could present a London season of Riflemind as early as September, and a spokesman for STC said there had been "preliminary discussions".

Panter is a co-founder of ATG, which owns 23 venues in Britain and is also a creative production company.

The Australian reports that Panter also has interest in bringing plays from the growing Belvoir Street Theatre to London, and is considering opening up an Australian office for ATG to fill what he sees as a "play gap".

In her review of Riflemind for AussieTheatre.com, Maz Dixon said, in part: "There doesn’t seem to be much progression in the way of character development or plot. Revelations are made through monologues that don’t sit well stylistically with the dialogues. By the end I felt like I had just spent a couple of hours watching a group of mildly unpleasant people yelling at each other. I felt that I would have been able to engage with the characters more if Upton had just let something, anything, happen. Riflemind is a good play; it could be so much better if the characters were required to do more than just spin their wheels."