After a hit season at Belvoir in 2011, this exquisite play by Lally Katz, brought to the stage by director Simon Stone, had a second life as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2014 Season. 

And God said: Thou shalt love thy neighbour. He obviously hadn’t reckoned on Ana.

Robyn Nevin is Ana: a battle hardened Hungarian-Australian veteran of the twentieth century. Catherine is her neighbour: twenty-something and waiting for a better world. Can their unlikely friendship outlive the colossal forces of history, the inevitability of death, and a trip to the mall to see Mamma Mia?

Neighbourhood Watch is a glorious comedy about hope, death and pets. Lally Katz wrote it for the great Robyn Nevin. It’s a classic odd-couple story: opposites attract, and from each other they gain a new understanding. But as the domestic crises accumulate, Neighbourhood Watch takes on a sense of enormity in the midst of the ordinary that would make Patrick White proud. Katz is a true original and in Neighbourhood Watch her spirit of curiosity turns optimism into an artform.

Nevin needs no introduction. Simon Stone directs this epic which questions whether we really know what is out there in the ‘burbs’.

Cast

Akos Armont
Charlie Garber
Anthony Harkin
Natasha Herbert
Megan Holloway
Kris McQuade
Robyn Nevin

Team

Writer Lally Katz
Director Simon Stone
Set & Costume Designer Dale Ferguson
Lighting Designer Damien Cooper
Composer & Sound Designer Stefan Gregory
Dramaturg Eamon Flack
Associate Sound Designer Terry McKibben
Stage Manager Eva Tandy

Video