Australian premiere of LOOKING FOR ALIBRANDI at Malthouse Theatre
Due to popular demand, Looking For Alibrandi has been extended to 31 July and will now enjoy a four week season when it opens this July. Director Stephen Nicolazzo (Loaded, Merciless Gods) brings Melina Marchetta’s best-selling novel and beloved Australian cult film to the stage for the first time and will premiere in Malthouse’s Merlyn Theatre, before a season at Belvoir St Theatre in Sydney.
Vidya Rajan’s adaptation will join three generations of women in a passionate, heart wrenching, and unmissable rendering of the Australian classic.
Josie Alibrandi is in her final year of high school. Whip-smart and aspirational, she is a third-generation Italian teenager and scholarship kid, with the shadow of a family curse and a penchant for rulebreaking. Juggling grades, boys, and the claustrophobia of an overbearing nonna and saintly mother, Josie’s life becomes tangled in the webs of class, identity, and family history as she finds her place in a changing world.
Starring Chanella Macri (Australian Realness), Lucia Mastrantone, and Jennifer Vuletic (Because The Night) as the Alibrandi women with John Marc Desengano, Ashley Lyons and Hannah Monson, Looking for Alibrandi is the honest and empowered portrait of 1990s Mediterranean culture that spoke for the first time about systemic racism in Australia from a migrant perspective. It defined a generation and to this day resonates with those caught in the stranglehold of identity and othering in this country.
Director Stephen Nicolazzo:
The story has always compelled me because it spoke so directly to the conflict I experienced, socially and internally. I was scared to embrace my identity for fear of not being able to access an Anglo-centric world.
Josie was the first character I had ever read or seen on screen that understood what it was like. She made me proud to be a wog and I will thank Melina for creating her every single day.
Season Details
Venue: Merlyn theatre
Date: 8 – 31 July 2022
For more information click HERE
