Melbourne Theatre Company

And it was essentially Matthew Flinders and his cat talking for two and a half hours with the occasional song.

Anyway, surprisingly, I didn't get too much interest from the Melbourne Theatre Company or the Sydney Theatre Company or any of the major theatre companies or indeed anybody.

And so a book was born.

That's what happens.

He's twice directed Phantom of the Opera on Sydney Harbour and was director of the new Australasian version of its sequel, Love Never Dies.

On top of all that, he's had long stints as artistic director of both the State Theatre Company of South Australia and the Melbourne Theatre Company.

He's also the recipient of seven Green Room Awards and six Heltman Awards.

He's currently in Sydney directing The Unfriend for the Sydney Theatre Company, the debut play from popular television writer Stephen Moffat, and I'm delighted that he snuck out of rehearsals to be in conversation with me now.

But it is, a conductor can, especially in a comic opera, which there we go again, I've been asked to do quite a lot of, a conductor can make or break a comic opera because if the conductor takes it too slowly, it's...

It's lost.

Going back in time a little bit to, you had those long stints as artistic director of the State Theatre Company of South Australia, but also more importantly, or for longer, the Melbourne Theatre Company.

Did you enjoy that kind of period? Because I know that you then don't go on and do another artistic directorship.

... it's my favorite price.

We're gonna be on with the Australian Ballet School, Bell Shakespeare, Opera Australia, Melbourne Theatre Company, Jude Pearl, Circus Oz, Robyn Fox, a whole bunch of artists.

It's gonna be a lot of fun, Matt.

Can I ask you a question, Rich? That's a really, really impressive lineup of people.

I mean the numbers that are killed and thousands still missing and Australians amongst them, it doesn't matter whether they're Australians or or people from the local region, it's just horrible, isn't it, that natural disaster can cause such grief and devastation.

And I was thinking about that in the context of today's show, The Jungle and the Sea, which is a Melbourne Theatre Company production in collaboration with Ling Aliam Dance Company at the South Bank Theatre, the Sumner, which is very, very close to town.

And this concerns not natural disaster but war.

And...

And what else has happened? Saw Uncle Vanya.

Uncle Vanya, adapted by Joanna Murray-Smith and directed by Anne-Louise Sarks at the MTC.

Saw that and was pretty rigorously disappointed by it.

It wasn't without beauty, for sure.

But that just goes to show you how subjective the theatrical experience is.

Anyway, let's keep moving.

Unless you want me to talk more about the promo material for Uncle Vanya at the MTC.

Again, were they mad at each other while they were filming it? Did the editor want it to look like they were mad at each other? These are the questions I have.

And Vicky Falconer also joined at that point to explore the actor-musician version of the show because she's very versed in that.

And from that particular workshop that happened in, I think, February 23, MTC came along, saw it, loved it, picked it up for the production that ended up becoming the one that everyone knows at the end of 24.

Wow.

Oh, my goodness.

Today's episode features Sarah Goodes, an award-winning Australian theatre director known for championing new Australian work.

She has directed more than 20 new productions for major companies, including Sydney Theatre Company and Melbourne Theatre Company, with recent highlights including Break of Day by Stevie Rogers for Malthouse Theatre, The Talented Mr Ripley for Sydney Theatre Company, Julia by Joanna Murray-Smith starring Justine Clark, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which sold out in Melbourne before touring to Sydney.

In 2025, she started Jacaranda Productions with actor-producer Diana Glenn after they met at AFTRS, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

Their goal? To create multi-medium stories by finding ideas that start in theatre and developing them into TV, film and online productions, and vice versa.

And no matter how much work I've done, I always come back to it.

And even if it's an adaptation of something known, it's done through an Australian writer's very unique perspective of that.

But one of the main ones was I developed a play called Sunday with a Melbourne theatre company with a writer, Anthony Way, And it was about Sunday Reid and Sydney Nolan and Joy Hester.

And it was developed over COVID.