close
Email Newsletter
Contact Us

 
2010 Next Stage

Creative Team

Created and Performed by The Suitcase Royale: Joseph O’Farrell, Miles O’Neil and Glen Walton

Outside eyes provided by: Neill Gladwin and Kent Johnston


If you’re under 30 we encourage you to join the STC YAP network via Facebook so you can keep up to date with the latest YAP events, access heavily discounted tickets, be part of STC’s under 30s audiences and join in the conversation!

 
Email Reminder
 
 

Sydney Theatre Company presents
The Suitcase Royale in
The Ballad of Backbone Joe

 

A dollar fight gone wrong, a classy Sheila with a mind for revenge and a private detective hot on her heels…

 

The Ballad of Backbone Joe tells a twisted tale of the apparent death, the murder no less, of a woman in a blood red dress. Set in the roaring carnival days of prewar Australia, in a small town’s abattoir and boxing emporium, the tale unfolds through jigsaw narrative, film, visual trickery, bone-crunching slapstick, dark humour and the unique Rag ‘n’ Bone music and junkyard aesthetic of Melbourne-based, internationally acclaimed, trio The Suitcase Royale. Contra bass, banjo, guitar, accordion, drums and the ghostly voice of a reddressed vixen carry this broken-down truck of a show down the windy road of revenge.

 

We’re delighted to welcome “the smoking hot hipster husbands of performance art” (ThreeThousand.com.au) to The Wharf (in fact, we like them so much we may never let them leave!).

 

Running time: 60 minutes, no interval

 

Check out The Ballad of Backbone Joe trailer from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival here.

 

Photo: John O'Neil

Reviews

‘If Tom Waits and the Mighty Boosh went to Australia, they'd come back with a show like this...24-carat entertainment’ The Guardian (UK)

'Beguiles with the sheer breadth of its originality...superb' **** Scotsman

 

Suitcase Royale: a hugely funny script and gorgeous songs performed by three very talented and equally charming Ozzies. Simply marvellous.4* - TimeOut London


The Suitcase Royale is a Rag ‘n’ Bone band of three from Melbourne that has been creating and performing work since mid 2004, creating theatre out of the junk left on the kerb side, out of the refuge of the city dump and the carelessly placed materials of your local construction site. The company have toured both nationally and internationally to great critical acclaim, selling out shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide as well as seasons in the Pittsburgh Arts Festival, Edinburgh fringe, Ruhrfestspiele festival, Germany, Dublin and the Soho theatre in London.

 

Winners, Golden Gibbo award (Melbourne Comedy Festival 2008)

Winners, Best of the Melbourne Fringe Festival

 

‘Visionary, emancipated and transformational... The Suitcase Royale create works of theatre achingly undiluted, joining the soul of madcap anarchy found in the best of the Marx Brothers to the self-sufficient purity found in travelling tent shows.’ - Pittsburgh City Paper

Dates & Prices

21 September - 2 October

 

UBS Two-Way Night
Post-show drinks and discussion with the cast and creative team brought to you by UBS
Tuesday 28 September at 8.15pm

 

Tickets
$25 - $30
(Transaction fees may apply)