Following critically acclaimed sell-out seasons in Dublin, New York, Edinburgh, and London, Bitchen Wolf is thrilled to present the Australian premiere of Irish playwright Eugene O’Brien’s Heaven, at Qtopia Sydney’s Loading Dock Theatre, from 14 May 2025.
Winner of the 2023 Irish Times Award for Best New Play and the 2023 Scotsman Fringe First Award, Heaven is a hilarious yet heart-wrenching examination of identity, regret, and the lives we secretly long for.
On the weekend of a wedding in rural Ireland, Mal and Mairead’s 20-year marriage is quietly crumbling. For Mal, a buried queer desire, once repressed in favour of a “normal” life, suddenly resurfaces when a Christlike young man reignites his forbidden fantasies.
For Mairead, a fiery, tough-as-nails woman who married Mal to escape her own reckless romantic past, the weekend throws her face-to-face with the one who got away – the man who still holds a piece of her heart.
Led by acclaimed Australian theatre director Kate Gaul (CAMP, Opera Australia’s The Magic Flute), O’Brien’s overwhelmingly compassionate portrait of marriage is delivered as a pair of alternating monologues by stars Lucy Miller (The Old Fitz’s The Female of the Species) and Noel Hodda (Seymour Centre’s Seventeen).
“When I first encountered this play, I struck not only by its compassion and laugh-out-loud humour but the dignity with which it presents the lives of people over a certain age. The text is beautifully poetic,” said Kate Gaul. “O’Brien acknowledges desire, failure, sexuality, hope in all of us.”
“As an older couple Mairead and Mal are great friends, they talk a lot, and they’re warm to each other but they each have a huge part of themselves that they haven’t revealed to one another. And it’s an edge of your seat adventure as the wine and Guinness starts flowing.”
Brimming with wit, pathos, love and liberation, Heaven is for anyone who’s ever questioned the road they’ve taken and yearned to break free.
Director: Kate Gaul | Featuring: Noel Hodda, Lucy Miller | Assistant Director: Romney Hamilton | Lighting Design: Topaz Marlay-Cole | Stage Manager: Caity Cowan | Dialect Coach: Carmen Lysiak | Social Media: Maddie Withington
Heaven
Loading Dock Theatre – Qtopia Sydney, 301 Forbes Street, Darlinghurst
Season: 16 – 31 May 2025 (previews: 14 & 15 May)
Bookings: www.humantix.com
For more information, visit: www.bitchenwolf.com for details.
Image: Lucy Miller and Noel Hodda to feature in Heaven (supplied)