When you scratch the surface, you get surface

Media Release: 25 March, 2009

When you scratch the surface, what you get is surface

Silo Theatre presents
THE SCENE

Pop Culture goes under the hammer this May when the New York theatrical sensation The Scene opens at the Herald Theatre. In his directorial debut Peter Elliott delivers blacker-than-ink comedy at its’ finest as The Scene delves into a world of malfunctioning modern relationships where toxic blonde bombshells leave no survivors.

Charlie used to be somebody. Now he's a nobody. Financially dependent on his wife and mortified by his own deadbeat status, he self-medicates his premature emasculation by ranting about the shallow lifestyle he still covets. Clea is new to the scene. She's a trophy wife in waiting with a vocabulary ripped straight from Facebook. Blondes don’t come any more toxic than this weapon of mass destruction. When she's done with this old dude, he'll be left bewitched, bankrupted and buggered. Unreality bites.

Now Auckland audiences can devour this sharp-elbowed comedy about the empty naricissism of contemporary pop culture and the savage economies of sex. Following on from last year’s smash The Little Dog Laughed, Silo Theatre takes another programming nudge from New York’s Second Stage Theatre with the play that the Variety called an “acerbic comedy of contemporary malaise”.

At the helm of the production is a newcomer to direction but certainly not a newcomer to the industry. Peter Elliott’s directorial debut follows on from his 2008 Silo Theatre appearances in Rabbit, opposite Claire Chitham, and his acclaimed turn as Peachum in The Threepenny Opera. In a 30-year career spanning television, film, opera and radio Elliot has appeared in Gloss, Shortland Street, Erebus, Captain’s Log and Explorers.

Fast becoming the new darling of Silo Theatre, Sophie Henderson has risen amongst the ranks to become one of the most promising new actresses to work with the company. Cutting her teeth as part of The Ensemble Project in 2007, Henderson delivered a star turn as the fast-talking, status hungry Ellen in The Little Dog Laughed. In The Scene she takes on a role familiar with viewers of telly shows such as Gossip Girl and Sex and the City: a toxic, sexually avaricious blond from the provinces trying to make it big in Manhattan.

Henderson is joined on stage by Stephen Lovatt. The New Zealand actor has just returned from the Melbourne production of Moonlight and Magnolias, director Bruce Beresford’s take on the almost-bungled making of Gone with the Wind. Lovatt is currently on screen here in New Zealand as the bumbling divorced dad Larry on Go Girls and last appeared for Silo Theatre in the smash hit production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing.

American playwright and novelist Theresa Rebeck’s name is almost as familiar in the television world as it is in theatre having written for popular television series such as Third Watch, L.A Law and NYPD Blue. Rebeck talks of her plays as being about "betrayal and treason and poor behaviour. A lot of poor behaviour."

In the tradition of The Women, Some Girl(s) and Rabbit, Silo Theatre is once again primed to provoke a new conversation about the very uncivil battle between the sexes. Armed with the hot new thing, Silo Theatre will deliver Auckland with the best in hilarious contemporary theatre.

THE SCENE plays May 29th – June 27th at the Herald Theatre, THE EDGE®
Tickets: $20.00 - $39.00
Bookings through THE EDGE® Ticketing: 09 357 3355 or www.buytickets.co.nz

ENDS

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