The Moors

By Jen Silverman
Season:
June 7th – July 9th, 2017
Red Stitch Actor’s Theatre, Melbourne
DIirector: Stephen Nicolazzo
Writer: Jen Silverman
Set and Costume Design:
Eugyeene Teh
Lighting Design: Katie Sfetkidis
Sound Design: Daniel Nixon
Stage Manager: Jacinta Anderson
Assistant Director: Katy Maudlin
Assistant Stage Manager:
Alyssa Hall
With:
Alexandra Aldrich, Zoe Boesen, Anna McCarthy, Olga Makeeva, Dion Mills, and Grace Lowry
Presented by
Red Stitch Actor’s Theatre.

Part gothic thriller and part black comedy, The Moors is a tale of seething tensions and repressed passions tormenting Agatha and Huldey, who are eking out an isolated life in the wild and inhospitable heath.

The bleak moors of England. The bleakest. The two sisters—one desperately unhappy, the other resolutely miserable, live with their elder brother, a scullery maid and their mastiff in a gloomy, old mansion. When a governess is summoned to their isolated home teeming with secrets and desires, what price might they pay for love?

Inspired by the lives and works of the 19th-century novel-writing Brönte sisters, Silverman harnesses the trappings of Victorian story-telling, suppressed eroticism, exquisite melodrama, and societal ills and exposes them through the portrayal of women in terrible living conditions – but with a contemporary twist.

Jen Silverman’s bizarre and vivid script is a unique exploration of identity, gender roles, sexuality and what it is to write your own story.

This production marked the first collaboration between Little Ones Theatre and Red Stitch. The Moors played to a sell out season and received overwhelming acclaim from critics and audiences alike.

The Moors received 4 Green Room Award nominations in 2018 including: Best Production, Best Actress (Alex Aldrich), Best Lighting Design (Katie Sfetkidis) and Best Director (Stephen Nicolazzo).

In 2018, The Moors received an Alternative Helpmann Award from Time Out Melbourne for Best OnStage Romance- Alexandra Aldrich and Zoe Boesen.

Featured in: The Age’s Top 10 Theatre Shows 2017, Time Out’s Top Ten Theatre Shows in Melbourne 2017, The Music’s Best of Melbourne Theatre 2017, and Sometimes Melbourne’s What Melbourne Loved yearly round up.

★★★★½ “An erotically powerful, kink-queer parable…this brilliant theatre maker (Nicolazzo) achieves something that only the most assured of practitioners can pull off: he has created a show that is both perfectly tailored to its text and yet distinctly representative of his own unique aesthetic. ”
Maxim Boon, The Music

★★★★ “The Moors is a scintillating engagement…Stephen Nicolazzo is the perfect director to bring all this to life. Bizarre and raunchy, subversive and disturbing, and deliciously funny all at once.”
Cameron Woodhead, The Age

★★★★ “Nicolazzo is one of this country’s most exciting and compelling directors, recalling a young Barrie Kosky.”
Tim Byrne, Time Out

“Acting throughout is exquisite…Nicolazzo has crafted a visual, sensual and theatrical masterpiece.”
Chris Boyd, The Australian

“Quirky and entertaining.”
Kate Herbert, Herald Sun

“Brooding quirk and menace…unique, witty performances that engaged and entertained… beautifully crafted, funny and clever show”
David Collins, Arts Review

“Sinister, dark, and humorous…every cast member was strong, convincing and compelling…[a] gothic surrealist gem of a play ”
Tania Herbert, Theatre Press