Hydra
Regular price
€18.50
Wild, passionate and ultimately tragic: the love story of Australia’s famous literary couple, Charmian Clift and George Johnston, plays out on the idyllic Greek island of Hydra in the 1950s, in this reimagining from award-winning playwright Sue Smith.
Dedicating their lives to writing, the couple were figureheads of Hydra’s bohemian community of artists and dreamers, which included Leonard Cohen, Sidney and Cynthia Nolan, Alan Moorehead and others. In Hydra, inspiration runs wild, as the couple pen works which will go on to be classics, including Charmain Clift’s famed Sydney Morning Herald essays and George Johnson’s Miles Franklin-winning classic My Brother Jack. And yet, their lives were wrought with jealously, money woes, illness and alcoholism. Told from the perspective of their eldest son Martin, and weaving in text from their own writing, Hydra brings to these remarkable artists to life.
Dedicating their lives to writing, the couple were figureheads of Hydra’s bohemian community of artists and dreamers, which included Leonard Cohen, Sidney and Cynthia Nolan, Alan Moorehead and others. In Hydra, inspiration runs wild, as the couple pen works which will go on to be classics, including Charmain Clift’s famed Sydney Morning Herald essays and George Johnson’s Miles Franklin-winning classic My Brother Jack. And yet, their lives were wrought with jealously, money woes, illness and alcoholism. Told from the perspective of their eldest son Martin, and weaving in text from their own writing, Hydra brings to these remarkable artists to life.
Sue Smith is a multi-award winning screenwriter, playwright and script editor. Sue’s recent screen credits include co-writer of feature film Saving Mr Banks (2013, Disney Pictures), ABC telemovie MABO (screened SFF in 2012 and winning an AWGIE and Queensland Literary Award), ABC miniseries Bastard Boys (won AFI Award for Best Screenplay in Television), feature film Peaches (nominated AWGIE Award) and SBS miniseries RAN, which Sue co-wrote with John Alsop and Alice Addison, receiving another AFI Award for Best Screenplay in Television. Other credits include telemovies Temptation and The Road From Coorain and more. Sue was the STC Patrick White Playwrights Fellow for 2018, and received the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian Writers’ Guild.