Wonnangatta Station, 1918. Two men arrive at a dark and empty farmhouse looking for the manager, their friend Jim Barclay. No one’s heard from him for more than a month. Something’s amiss. Then a grim discovery sets the men off on a journey across the harsh Australian terrain, looking for answers, maybe for revenge.

 

Angus Cerini’s multi-award-winning The Bleeding Tree was a sensation on its premiere at Griffin Theatre and again when remounted by STC at The Wharf. In Wonnangatta, Cerini’s dark lyricism explores the Australian landscape – geographic and psychological – in a hard-driving yet poetic celebration of language and story.

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Writer: Angus Cerini

Director: Jessica Arthur

Designer: Jacob Nash

Lighting: Nick Schlieper

Composition and Sound Design: Stefan Gregory

Assistant Director: Deborah Brown

Movement Director: Tom Hodgson 
Voice and Text Coach Danielle Roffe

Cast: Wayne Blair and Hugo Weaving

Photographer: Prudence Upton

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★★★★ "This is strong, bold, and innovative work, well cast and well directed." Sydney Morning Herald

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★★★★ "Atmospherically staged and brilliantly performed by Hugo Weaving and Wayne Blair." Limelight Magazine

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★★★★ "Hugo Weaving and Wayne Blair, two titans of their craft, conjure vast landscapes, vividly painting scene after scene with their words." Time Out

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★★★★ 1/2 "A thrumming and immediate theatre experience to be revelled in for its beauty and terrors." Arts Hub

 

"Under Jessica Arthur’s assured direction, these are occasionally synchronised bushmen, with stability and a laconic economy of movement in roaming the raked stage and rhythmically riding dangerous trails in search of answers." Judith Greenaway, ArtsHub

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"Director Jessica Arthur shows fearless restraint in her largely static treatment. Weaving and Blair – also socially distanced on stage – trade theatrical physicality for sheer intensity of delivery...Arthur’s confidence in allowing her actors to bear the full weight of the storytelling is both a credit to her trust as a theatremaker and her understanding of her collaborators." - Maxim Boon, Time Out

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"Director Jessica Arthur masterfully builds select movements to lift this ballad beyond performance poetry."  Martin Portus, Stage Whispers

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