A scene from Wollongong Workshop Theatre’s production of Ordinary Days. Photo: McKenzee Scrine.
If you’re after a bit of fun and music to balance out Halloween week, Wollongong Workshop Theatre’s latest production, Ordinary Days, will fit the bill.
Adam Gwon’s heartwarming and funny musical, which will be the theatre’s final show for 2024, is about making real connections in the city that never sleeps.
The show opens on Friday 1 November and runs until 17 November.
With a cast of just four performers, it tells the story of four New Yorkers whose lives cross over as they search for meaning, happiness, love and cabs.
It celebrates how over eight million individual stories interlace in unexpected ways to make New York City such a unique and remarkable city.
Samantha Atkinson, who plays Deb, loves the show’s music, which has been likened to the work of Stephen Sondheim in speed and complexity.
“My favourite part of the show is the music. I think it’s beautiful how it all flows together and how the characters’ stories blend together musically,” she said.
“It’s a really strong show with beautiful themes and stories, and I think it’ll move a lot of people.”
The characters include Warren (Matthew Dorahy), a self-proclaimed “pioneer of visual art” who works as a house sitter for a jailed graffiti artist.
He spends his free time walking the streets of New York, attempting to promote his employer’s work by handing out flyers to people who largely pretend he doesn’t exist.
When he meets Deb, a cynical and highly strung graduate student, he makes it his mission to show her that beauty can be found everywhere – we only need to slow down and notice it.
While they don’t realise it, Warren and Deb briefly cross paths with Jason (Conor Healey-Green) and Claire (Michaela Hewitt).
Conor says it’s a simple but moving story.
“To my knowledge, Ordinary Days hasn’t been done in the Illawarra,” he said.
“It’s very stripped back, it’s raw, it’s acoustic – it’s just a piano and a simple story about four people in New York whose lives intertwine with each other. It’s lovely and powerful.”
A hopeless romantic at heart, Jason is not a lover of the big city but has decided to make the best of it to be closer to his girlfriend Claire.
The two have recently decided to move in together and Jason is puzzled by Claire’s resistance to let go of objects from her past.
Despite her best efforts to keep her past in the past, Jason’s well-meaning attempts to connect with her threaten to bring Claire’s carefully constructed internal barriers crumbling down.
Ordinary Days opens at the Wollongong Workshop Theatre in Gwynneville on 1 November. Performances are at 8 pm on Fridays and Saturdays and 2 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets, at $30 and $25 concession, are available here.
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