A BUMPER debut season for fledgling Canberra company Heart Strings Theatre Co has capped the year off with an offer that couldn’t be refused – a professional season in Sydney. 

The production, “Urinetown”, directed by the company’s founder Ylaria Rogers, will take the stage at the petite theatre in Potts Point in January and February and it’s all systems go. 

Rogers, who worked as assistant director on a production some years ago at the Hayes, after studying at the Australian Institute of Music, has been manoeuvring behind the scenes and in July, even as the production was in its tech run at the Courtyard Studio, she was pitching a proposal for the production to travel to Sydney. 

Canberra musical director Leisa Keen will be replaced by Sydney’s Matthew Reid, the choreographer will be Cameron Mitchell who’s just directed the Gershwin musical, “Nice Work If You Can Get It” for Hayes and several Sydney and interstate artists will take some of the roles.

This is to be what Rogers calls a “rebuilt” production of what we saw in July, praised by critics for its mastery of musical satire, and for being, despite the pessimistic title, a jolly good night out in the theatre.

The 2001 satirical musical was written by Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, has won Tony Awards and had already been staged here by Narrabundah College and Supa Productions. 

In it, a water shortage caused by a 20-year drought has led to a government-enforced ban on private toilets, but a hero decides that he’s had enough and plans a revolution to lead them all to freedom.

Rogers believes that “Urinetown” is “the right show at the right place at the right time”.

An exceedingly topical show given the wide experience of drought and lockdowns, and a very funny one, too, it is, she says, perfect for “a period of time when we need some relief – high drama is not really appropriate at the moment”.

It was actually the Hayes, a petite 114-seat venue named after Nancye Hayes where top Sydney professionals stage big Broadway shows in an intimate situation, that inspired Rogers to establish Heart Strings Theatre in the first place. 

With 92 seats, Canberra’s Courtyard Studio was comparable in size and the production she staged in July won’t need all that much rejigging for Sydney. In fact, she believes she’ll be able to remount it in just over a week with rehearsal, starting on January 2.

The Canberra component of the cast features some of our hottest theatrical properties – Karen Vickery and Natasha Vickery, Deanna Farnell, Joel Horwood, Max Gamble, Joe Dinn and Petronella Van Tienen – and the whole cast will work for a guaranteed fee and a share of the profits. 

Quite a few of them will be negotiating around a day job, rehearsing in Sydney while working online to Canberra – one of the more advantageous aspects of life in the post-covid era. All will find ways of accommodating themselves in Sydney so that Heart Strings does not incur accommodation costs. 

“We are doing it on the basis that they are Sydney-based performers,” Rogers says. “A lot of people give up a lot of things to support their artistic growth.”

“Urinetown,” Hayes Theatre, Potts Point, Sydney, January 11-February 5.