RETURN TO EARTH Comes To MTC Mainstage, November 9

In her MTC mainstage debut, Katz delivers a fantastical play steeped in autobiographical detail; a bitter-sweet comedy about a young lady who returns home only to discover a foreign country. Directed by MTC Associate Director Aidan Fennessy and starring Kim Gyngell, Julie Forsyth and daughter of Jean-Pierre, Eloise Mignon, Return to Earth opens Wednesday 9 November 2011 at 8pm at the Arts Centre, Fairfax Studio.

Alice returns home to the sleepy seaside town of Tathra and everything seems just as she left it, so why does it seem so unfamiliar? It's as if she's forgotten everything she's ever known, everything she needs to make a settled, simple life. Her family try to help her out and she wants to settle down - really she does - but some part of her still floats way up there in the blue.

Welcome to the fresh and off-centre world of award-winning playwright Lally Katz, with a play that looks deeply to the strangeness within.

‘For Lally Katz lateral thinking is like breathing. She apparently cannot help but apply it to everything that falls under her keen eye, transforming our world of mundane phenomena into hers of strangeness and estrangement.' MTC Artistic Director Simon Phillips.

Described by The Age as a ‘prodigiously talented playwright', Lally Katz's works include, Criminology (co-written with Tom Wright, for Arena Theatre Company and the Malthouse), Goodbye New York, Goodbye Heart (premiered in New York), Waikiki Palace and Hip Hip Hooray (premiered in Sydney Theatre Company's Wharf2Loud program). Katz is a core member of independent theatre group Stuck Pigs Squealing, for which she's written The BLACK SWAN of Trespass, The Eisteddfod, Lally Katz and the Terrible Mysteries of the Volcano and Apocalypse Bear Trilogy, which was featured in the 2009 MTC Lawler Studio Season. Many of Katz's works have toured extensively and she has won several awards including the Victorian Premiers' Award for Drama. Return to Earth was nominated for the 2010 Griffin Award. 2011 has been a bumper year for Katz with her plays being performed around the country - Malthouse Theatre (The Golem Story), Belvoir St Theatre (Neighbourhood Watch) and Griffin Theatre (Smashed).

‘Lally Katz is a true original ... although her work calls up shades of Pirandello, Cocteau, Chekhov and a bunch of other people. There is an anarchy in its core which means that anything might happen, a perilous sense that the whole might disintegrate into total nonsense: but it never does, because also at work is an unobtrusively steely discipline and a very sharp wit' Alison Croggon, Theatre Notes

‘The parallel universe of Lally Katz's imagination is an estranging, breathlessly anxious, uneasily hilarious place' The Australian

Director Aidan Fennessy
Set & Costume Designer Claude Marcos
Lighting Designer Lisa Mibus
Composer/Sound Designer Kelly Ryall
Assistant Director Patrick McCarthy

Cast Anthony Ahern (Theo), Julie Forsyth (Wendy Waster), Kim Gyngell (Cleveland Waster), Eloise Mignon (Alice Waster), Tim Ross (Tom Waster) and Anne-Louise Sarks (Jeanie)

Return to Earth
Venue the Arts Centre, Fairfax Studio
Season Dates 4 November to 17 December 2011
Opening Night Wednesday 9 November 2011 at 8pm
Tickets From $61.10 ($30 Under 30s)
Booking Details The MTC Theatre Box Office 03 8688 0800 or mtc.com.au; the Arts Centre Box Office 1300 182 183 or theartscentre.com.au

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