COST OF LIVING Opens in Sydney Next Month

Sydney Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre’s new co-production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Tony-nominated Broadway smash-hit, Cost of Living, will play the Wharf Theatre from 18 July following a season at Queensland Theatre's Bille Brown Theatre. 

Priscilla Jackman (RBG: Of Many, One) and internationally acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Dan Daw (The Dan Daw Show) direct this Australian premiere production of one of the best pieces of new writing to emerge from the US in the last decade, written by former carer turned playwright, Martyna Majok.

Co-director and performer Daw leads an exceptional cast including Philip Quast (STC's Do Not Go Gentle), Kate Hood (Malthouse Theatre's The Real and Imagined History of the Elephant Man), and Zoe de Plevitz(Netflix's Boy Swallows Universe) in a beautifully rendered four-hander about our need to care, or be cared for, no matter the distance that age, race and disability might place between us.

Majok draws on her lived experience as she invites audiences into the intimate spaces of two relationships. Ani, a woman with an acquired disability, reconnects with her estranged husband Eddie who is battling feelings of guilt and loneliness. John, a wealthy Princeton student with cerebral palsy, hires Jess, a woman juggling multiple jobs just to stay afloat, as his carer. 

Through a series of stirring vignettes told with enormous heart, Majok teases out the nuanced power dynamics, pathos and humour of these characters’ lives, painting a vivid portrait of austerity in the twenty-first century.

The creative team features Michael Scott Mitchell (Set and Costume Designer), John Rayment (Lighting Designer), Guy Webster (Composer and Sound Designer), Gabrielle Rogers (Dialect Coach), and NJ Price(Movement and Intimacy Coach).

Cost of Living plays at Wharf 1 Theatre from 18 July – 18 August 2024.