Season:
May 30-June 10, 2018
Theatre Works, St Kilda
Director: Stephen Nicolazzo
Set and Costume Design:
Eugyeene Teh
Lighting Design: Katie Sfetkidis
Sound Design and Composition: Daniel Nixon
Producer: Little Ones Theatre
Photographer: Pia Johnson
With:
Jennifer Vuletic, Brigid Gallacher, Yuchen Wang
Presented by
Theatre Works and Little Ones Theatre
A lush gothic fable, The Nightingale and The Rose, explores the beauty of love, art, creation, and song from the perspective of an effervescent nightingale who hears the longing cries of a young student desperate to find a red rose to give to his sweetheart.
On her quest to retrieve the red rose for the lovesick student, the nightingale is confronted with a haunting decision that will shake her and the very universe to its core, her life and voice for a red rose, or eternal heartbreak.
Told through a highly stylised, visual, and queer aesthetic, Little Ones Theatre’s exploration of Oscar Wilde’s most bewitching and melancholic fairy tale will unpack the adult longing laced within Wilde’s poetic prose, highlighting idealistic and cynical perspectives of love with all his decadent symbolism, sweeping romanticism and biting wit.
Queer, visual, and fierce, this new adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE, devised by Little Ones Theatre, will be an ambitious follow up to our 2017 production, The Happy Prince, and the second part of a trilogy of stirring adult re-tellings of Oscar Wilde’s most bewitching children’s stories.
Featuring the tour de force Jennifer Vuletic (Mercilesss Gods) as the Nightingale, Brigid Gallacher (Merciless Gods, Dangerous Liaisons, Dracula) and Yuchen Wang (Little Emperors), Little Ones Theatre’s newest ode to Oscar Wilde is not to be missed.
Featured in: Keith Gow’s Top 20 Theatre Shows of 2018 and Across The Aisle’s standout performances of 2018.
★★★★ “Director Stephen Nicolazzo has constructed an exquisite ode to Romanticism in this adaptation, as detailed and precise as anything he’s put on stage before. Nicolazzo is the ideal theatre maker to bring these fairy tales, quivering and beautiful, back into the light.” Tim Byrne, Time Out
★★★★ “The ingredients that make up this production are a recipe for brilliance. I was captivated. Keeps your mind ticking over. A must.” Liddy Clark, Stage Noise
“The alto-voiced Brigid Gallacher is deliciously androgynous. Jennifer Vuletic plays the nightingale with claw hands and coloratura. Her performance is a feast. Original and true to the writer that inspired it” Chris Boyd, The Australian
“Distilling Wilde’s dark parable into a seamless 45 minutes, The Nightingale and The Rose rides high on Eugyeene Teh’s stylish design, and on magnetic, savagely beautiful performance that flows into moments of amusing camp. No doubt Oscar would have approved.” Cameron Woodhead, The Age
“Little Ones Theatre capture the bittersweet and painfully beautiful nature of Oscar Wilde’s tale with great artistry and passion for the text…so as the company plans ahead for an adaptation of a third story in the future, we can only hope for more!” Bradley Storer, Theatre Press
“This production is sexy, witty and haunting and will have you pondering what price you would pay for true love.” Faith Sinnott, Be Melbourne