The Trouble With Harry

by Lachlan Philpott

2013 | Outburst Queer Arts Festival, The Mac, Belfast NI
2014 | Melbourne Festival, Northcote Town Hall, Melbourne AU

Harry Crawford and his wife Annie seem happy enough. Together they lead quiet, unexceptional lives in the suburbs of 1920s Sydney, working and raising a child. But when Josephine arrives at the door, it sets in train a series of events that will result in an astounding revelation. Based on the extraordinary true story of the ‘ManWoman’ murder that shocked turn of the century Australians, The Trouble with Harry is a disorienting tale of deception and enigma which poses an essential, human question: can we ever really know what lies in the heart and mind of someone else?

WINNER – BEST DIRECTION (ALYSON CAMPBELL),
MELBOURNE GREEN ROOM AWARDS 2015

WINNER – BEST PRODUCTION, MELBOURNE GREEN ROOM AWARDS 2015

Melbourne Production

2014
Melbourne Festival
Northcote Town Hall
Melbourne, AU

DIRECTOR
Alyson Campbell
PRODUCER
John Kachoyan
PERFORMERS
Maude Davey, Daniel Last, Caroline Lee, Dion Mills, Elizabeth Nabben and Emma Palmer
SET & COSTUME DESIGNER
Eugyeene Teh
LIGHTING DESIGNER
Rob Sowinski
SOUND DESIGNER
Chris Wenn
ASSOCIATE PRODUCERS
Eric Gardiner and Corey Reynolds
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Amy Bagshaw
STAGE MANAGER
Harriet Gregory
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Alice Darling
PHOGOTRAPHY
Sarah Walker

Excerpts

★★★★★ Critic’s Choice: ‘Without doubt, this is the best new play to come out of this country in a long while… A play that is unafraid to navigate the clichés of the Aussie period drama, that cuts into our cultural prejudice and unresolved gender assumptions, that squarely lays the blame back in the laps of its audience, is a play worth seeing. That it is also poetic and rich and moving renders it unmissable.’

Tim Byrne, TimeOut Melbourne
‘Director Alyson Campbell hits on a complex and inspired performance style that blends delicate naturalism and free-wheeling artifice, and an overt theatricality that illuminates the tensions between contemporary and period frames of reference’

Cameron Woodhead, The Age
'An eloquent example of what grown-up, gender-conscious theatre is capable of achieving…it is a play which all those interested in our ongoing evolution as sentient social beings would benefit from seeing. What is ‘authentic’ and unalterable in human nature, and what is up for negotiation? The Trouble with Harry doesn’t answer these questions definitively, but poses them with particular intelligence and acuity.'

Terry Blain, Irish Theatre Magazine

Belfast Production

November 2013
Outburst Queer Arts Festival
with TheatreofplucK
The MAC (Metropolitan Arts Centre), Belfast, NI

DIRECTOR
Alyson Campbell
PERFORMERS
Stephanie Weyman, Gordon Mahn, Michelle Wiggins, Louise Mathews, Matthew Mitchell, Roisin Gallagher
DESIGNER
Niall Rea
SOUND DESIGNERS
Felipe Hickmann, Eduardo Patricio
COSTUME DESIGNER
Susan Scott