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Updated:
 23 Nov 2006

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About the Hartwell Players

Melbourne's oldest performing community theatre

The Hartwell Players Inc started in 1938 under the name “The Hartwell Presbyterian Merrymakers”. The group was initially restricted to women members of the Hartwell Presbyterian Church congregation, but began to admit men in about 1952, when the name was changed to “The Hartwell Players”. Hartwell has therefore been going for over 65 years. We recently took over the mantle of Melbourne's oldest community theatre group after New Theatre (est 1936) ceased operations.

63 years after our inception a major change crossed the Hartwell horizon, and that was a change of home. Our original landlord, the Hartwell Uniting Church, is disbanding and put all their property holdings - including our old Playhouse - up for sale. It has taken a lot of time and searching to find a wonderful new base, but we are now both happy and privileged to be partners with Ashwood College. The College is a school proud of students’ artistic achievements and has big plans to expand its dramatic facilities through a partnership with a community group such as ours.

We aim to present four productions every year. For summer it is a family pantomime, followed by an annual Shakespeare production that goes to the Stratford Festival in Gippsland every May. We then gear up for a season of one-act plays that culminates in touring the Victorian festivals (and sometimes beyond). The fourth show is an open-ended affair, and has recently seen the likes of Don’s Party and The Importance of Being Earnest.

One of most successful shows ever: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, opened in 1999. Family pantomimes prove great crowd pleasers in January. Riding on a wave of success we went straight into the classic Much Ado About Nothing, which got a wonderful reception both at our old Playhouse and the Stratford Festival. This show gained us great exposure throughout the community, being presented - in part - for a major charity luncheon and the Shakespeare Society, as well as being covered by the press and the radio.

August 1999 saw four one-act plays go under the banner Adult Concepts, with The Accidental Poke taking Adjudicator’s Award at the Anglesea Festival.

Buoyed by that success we went into 2000 with a very ambitious project, The Wizard of Oz, complete with the songs made famous in the MGM film starring Judy Garland. Toe-tapping dance numbers, sparkling sets and mysterious special effects enthralled school holiday crowds.

Later that year we kept the enjoyment running with the very, very funny Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare Season 2000). There was a small break and then family crowds were soon packing the Playhouse for Alice in Wonderland in January 2001. Alice was so popular it received brilliant colour coverage in the press and ran its own mad tea party in a café and in the street at the Boroondara Writers’ Festival!

2001 continued with a powerful presentation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which doubled as a farewell production for our old home and a crowd-pleaser at the Stratford festival.

Due to the impending sale of our old playhouse, we then moved to Ashwood College. For our patrons this meant improved creature comforts and for the back stage crew it meant a step up in modernisation. We opened this wonderful new theatre with Menagerie - our collection of one-act plays for 2001. Menagerie then went on to pull in major production & acting awards at the Anglesea and Ballarat drama festivals. What a buzz!

A plan to do more shows per year came into place and Don's Party (by David Williamson) had us filling up the spacious Ashwood hall with show four for 2001. In a marvellous ironic twist, the background theme of it being an election year (1969) came to reality and our season was cut in half when the Ashwood hall became a polling centre. Not to be deterred, we put the whole show on the road and entertained the locals in Hastings with a specially commissioned performance at the Harbour View Motel.

The first pantomime in our new home was Ali Baba, written by one of our own members and starring not quite 40 thieves. Exotic costumes and glittering sets marked this traditional tale of mischievous goings-on in ancient Arabia. 2002 continued with Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, an excellently presented version of the Bard’s usual fare: drama, humour, tragedy and ultimate redemption.

In quick succession, the season of one-act plays known as Life & Other Catastrophes hit the stage. Again these did well at home base and on the road. Particularly exciting was the award-winning success of our younger members, who put together a youth production under the Hartwell banner.

2002 came to a close with a perennial favourite: Oscar Wilde’s witty The Importance of Being Earnest. The production was marked with sumptuous costuming and a clever set and barely left us time to draw breath before returning to the boards in 2003.

And what a 2003 it was, with our Peter Pan pantomime exceeding all expectations in January. The acrobatics, flying and sword fights had young audience members clamouring to join the Lost Boys (and pirates, too!). Many of our new cast members stayed with the group for the rest of the year, and you may have noticed if you came to see The Tamingof the Shrew that followed soon after. We got a little bit tangled up with Easter during the season, but excellent performances drew a great crowd for a special Good Friday charity performance and comments of "your best ever" at the Stratford Festival. Crowds were on the up and they continued to flow in for Love and the Supernatural, the one act play season for the year. People loved the mixture of comedies that included offerings from Melbourne playwrights. There was barely time to stop laughing before the curtains raised for hilarious farce, Funny Money (by Ray Cooney). This one had a most memorable set (and cast!).

Sometimes you just can’t ignore old favourites, Toad of Toad Hall was a great opening to 2004, after being so popular for us 9 years ago. Poop poop! After such buffoonery, it was a complete change of pace to sweep into the timeless beauty and tragedy of young love in the classic Romeo and Juliet. By this stage we were really gathering a wonderful pool of talent, as evidenced by the amazing run of success of the 2004 one act play season. Turning Points swept through the rural festivals following our home season. We were very chuffed! Not content with that, we then challenged ourselves with the complexity and wit of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.

So now it is now 2005. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a legend loved by generations of children, and so we brought a sparkling production to many, many families during Summer. People were watching with interest to see what we could do with Shakespeare’s Richard III. “Gripping” would the ideal single word to describe this production and its success at home and in Stratford proved that the best successes come from the hardest work. This was the first time we have been asked to open the Shakespeare Festival. Wow.

At the time of writing, we are in rehearsals for Homegrown @ Hartwell. We’re not just a group of actors - many of our members have won prizes in script writing competitions and now is the time to bring these great pieces of entertainment to our audience.

Membership is required to be involved in our activities. Adult members are currently $25 yearly, and families are $35. Membership is free for under 18s, but voting rights on Hartwell matters are only available to paying members. Taking a role in a show requires a $15 production fee ($10 for juniors). All paid members get a single ticket to each of the shows in the year

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