By Roger Hall
Directed by Sam Fisher

Season: 24 Nov – 4 Dec 1999

Three middle-aged couples are trapped in the suburban way of life bored with themselves, their spouses and their daily routine of job or family or household chores. They are six very ordinary people, but they are portrayed with sensitivity and sympathy. There's excitement and revelations, yet in the end they must return to their routine. 

Cast:
Elizabeth - Lynley McFaull
Colin - David Allen
Isobel - Lisa Radcliffe
Reg - Tom Vavasour
Judy - Laura Bootham
Robert - Alec Saunders
Voice of Caroline - Kelsey Vavasour

By Barry Grant and Felicity Williams, based on “One of Bens” by Maurice Shadbolt

Director: Barry Grant
Musical Director: Mark Hodgkinson
Choreographer: Justine Whitaker

Season: 18 Sep – 2 Oct 1999

Justice is a Snake tells the tale of Ernest and Ada Shadbolt when they lived in Banks Peninsula over the period 1898 to 1909. Ernest and Ada, the grandparents of both Maurice Shadbolt the author and Tim Shadbolt the mayor, moved to Little River to make their fortune from a guest house, general store, billiard saloon, and residence. Guests began to leave however, because of a smell which was traced to sewage pipes under the guest
house carrying effluent from the Little River railway station.  Ernest sued the railways, and won, but a second trial was ordered. He won this one, too, but was not awarded costs. Penniless, he sued his lawyer Oscar Alpers, but lost. Bowed, but not broken, Ernest petitioned parliament, was given one hundred pounds, and won some King Country land in a ballot.

Cast:
Ernest Shadbolt - Paul Doig
Ada Shadbolt - Megan Scott
Dawson - Mark Tavendale
Anastasia - Sally McGregor
Mr Justice Denniston - John Jeffries
Mr Oscar Alpers - Don Brown
Mr K C Stringer - Kevin Wilder
William Shaw - Ian Beswick
Annie Shaw - Erin Callanan
Thomas - Stuart Frost
Richard - Ryan Boswell
Frederick - Steve Brown
Dr Saunders - Gwyn Randell

The Company:
Catherine Criuckshank, Anna Kean, Anastassia Smirnova, Kevin Wilder, Jacqueline Eade, Ptritiippa Howarth, Adrienne Watson

Children:
Lily Cartwight, Ranec Highet, Rachel Kennedy, Ryan Sloan, Shannon Smith, Sybil Heinz-Becroft, Anna Jamieson, Lillian Mulholland, Kati Smith

Musicians:
Amy Huang, Amy Hutchinson, Ari Freeman, Amelia Woodfield

By Douglas Post
Directed by Tamzin Darragh

Season: 19-29 May 1999

Thomas Devereaux, a successful architect and local contractor, and his beautiful wife, Joan, have just moved into their dream house in the quiet suburban town of Green Meadows when they are visited by their new neighbours, Carolyn and Jeff Symons, and a friendship develops quickly between the two couples. But underneath the cool, middle-American exterior, something is truly rotten. A previous sexual relationship between Joan and a teenage lawn-boy is revealed, as is the fact that Thomas learned of the infidelity and may have murdered his wife’s lover. To make matters worse, an affair has begun to develop between Joan and Jeff Symons. One summer evening, following the Symons departure after a friendly game of cards, Thomas lets Joan know that he is aware of this new deception, and his violent, possessive nature surfaces. He makes two demands of his wife: One, she must stop seeing Jeff. Two, she must kill him. What follows is a diabolical plot that continues to thicken through the final showdown between a murderer and an aggrieved widow.

Cast:
Carolyn Symons -  Nicola Pauling
Thomas Devereux - Julian Southgate
Jeffrey Symons - Sam Fisher
Joan Devereux - Ruth Close

Boris
By Barry Grant
Directed by Tamzin Darragh

An examination of what happens to spies in the post cold war era.

Cast:
Rose - Jo Stephens-Cockburn
Thompson - Sam Fisher
Boris - Tom Vavasour
SM Harrogate - Noel Alexander
Mrs Harrogate - Julie Moffett


The Real Inspector Hound
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Sam Fisher

Feuding theatre critics Moon and Birdboot, the first a fusty philanderer and the second a pompous and vindictive second stringer, are swept into the whodunit they are viewing. In the hilarious spoof of Agatha Christie-like melodramas that follows, the body under the sofa proves to be the missing first string critic. As mists rise about isolated Muldoon Manor, Moon and Birdfoot become dangerously implicated in the lethal activities of an escaped madman.

Cast:
Corpse - Alan Smithie
Moon - Julian Southgate
Birdboot - David Johnstone
Mrs Drudge - Julie Moffett
Simon Gascoyne - Miles Dalton
Felicity Cunningham - Melanie Camp
Cynthia Muldoon - Tamzin Darragh
Magnus Muldoon - Tom Vavasour
Inspector Hound - John Boyce
Radio Announcer - Bill Southgate
​

By Peter Shaffer
Directed by Peter Meikle

Season: 1 - 17 Oct 1998

Our 50th Anniversary Production.

Elderly Salieri looks back over his successful career as Court Composer, his hatred of Mozart and how he conceived and executed the young composer's demise.  The myth of the unappreciated genius who fought a losing and ultimately fatal battle against a fickle public and a Viennese Court rife with intrigue took root shortly after Mozart died, and has proven stubbornly resistant to correction ever since.

Amadeus is operatic - vast - so much more than a simple story. lt is also a play about self confrontation.  ln this script Shaffer presents a masterpiece of drama which reveals deep truths about the human condition. A supreme mystery about one loved by God and the other for whom God had, inexplicably, "no regard".

It is a play staged to music, where the rhythms and energy of the cast will present a spectacular fusion which embodies the very essence of live theatre

Cast:
​Mozart - Stephen Austin
Salieri - Barry Grant
Constanze - Trish Purcell
Rosenberg - Matthew Gillanders
Emperor - John Howden
Van Swieten - David Mann
Katherina - Lynley McFaull
Von Strack - Rob Scott
Venticelli -  Wendy Griffiths, Rachel Henderson, Angela Huggins, Mary Image, Marilyn Ollett, Kent Prusas

By Ivan Menchell
Directed by Peter Meikle

Season: 13 - 23 May 1998

Three Jewish widows meet once a month for tea before going to visit their husbands’ graves. Ida is sweet tempered and ready to begin a new life; Lucille is a feisty embodiment of the girl who just wants to have fun; and Doris is priggish and judgemental, particularly when Sam the butcher enters the scene. He meets the widows while visiting his wife’s grave. Doris and Lucille squash the budding romance between Sam and Ida. They are guilt-stricken when this nearly breaks Ida’s heart.

Cast:
Ida - Lynley McFaull 
Lucille - Trish Purcell
Doris - Kathryn Burnell
Sam - Miles Dalton
Mildred - Leeann Apps

By Dario Fo
Directed by Sam Fisher

Season: 28 Nov - 6 Dec 1997

Millionaire media boss Diane Forbes McKaye is kidnapped, but this ruthless magnate proves more resourceful than her clumsy abductors in this delight by the Nobel Prize winning Italian playwright. Are things what they seem? Who is in charge? Who masterminded the abduction? Who has the television rights to this premiere media event? Into this cocktail of chaos and double dealing, Fo adds a gun toting priest, a deranged altar boy, a kidnapper hiding in the fridge, pyromania and an explosive climax.

Cast:
Woman - Lisa Radcliffe
Young Man - Robert Brown
Chief Kidnapper - John Boyce
Kidnapper 2 - Stephen Austin
Kidnapper 3 - Scott Koorey
Mother - Marilyn Ollett
Priest - Barry Grant
Cleaner - Mary Cronin