The Playwrights Database
FRANK GAUNTLETT
Nationality:
Australian
email:
n/a
Website:
n/a
Literary Agent:
n/a
Frank Gauntlett, born London arrived in Australia 1981, has attempted a variety of jobs with varying degrees of calamity. Plays produced include Tales of Dark Knitting, Who Slew Reg Smedley? Vapours, Islands, the Case, Pan, Punch and Judy and Neighbours. His acclaimed adaptation of HG Wells' the Time Machine, starring Mark Lee, is to be revived mid-year. With John's widow Bunny Gibson, Frank wrote the biography of Australian acting icon John Meillon - Thanks a Meillon! His 'unfinished' film Out Backthe Butcher's Cut has escaped and is apparently going on some web thing soon. Frank wrote the excEllent (honest!) short film at the edge of the Bed, adapted from de Maupassant's short story, and he has also written several full-length screenplays, other plays, prose stuff, cheques, Facebook dealies and curt notes under the nom de guerre 'Disgusted of Sydney.' Frank is married to notorious gangster Jenny Brown. they have two excEllent children and a house full of stuff they like. It probably needs a bit of a cull really. there's a lot of junk in there. To a considerable extent Frank has no idea what he's going to do next but would like to do it in Morocco or Spain.
Research: https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/contributor/88
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11 PM Sharp
Synopsis:
a "social satire" - http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/13271
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Stables Theatre, Darlinghurst, Nsw
09 Jan 1992
Organisations:
Griffin Theatre Company
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
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Genre:
musical theatre
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/13271
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Breaking Bard
Synopsis:
There's fraud abroad. In 1796 it took just one little prick to burst London's spectacular literary balloon. His name was William Henry Ireland who, at 19, became history's foremost forger of bogus Shakespeare. Letters, poems, love notes, marginalia, slabs of signed manuscript, even entire new plays appeared and many believed them good - including Will's Shakespeare-obsessed, social-climbing father Samuel. In the Irelands' museum-like drawing room it's April 1. Planning and wit's-end panic is in the air. Samuel sold Sheridan the rights to Master Ireland's hitherto unknown play, purportedly by WIlliam Shakespeare, and tomorrow night John Phillip Kemble opens in Vortigern And Rowena at Drury Lane Theatre. A devastating assessment of Samuel's Shakespearean "relics" appeared the day before. Things are coming unglued and social climbers are plunging off the greasy pole in highly theatrical fashion. Folk lurk awkwardly under the mounting pressure of soliloquies and colourful exposition. Wigs are optional but flounces are de rigueur. Can a triumphant reception for Vortigern And Rowena save the situation? Sadly no. The play is a catastrophe, the fraud exposed and, as internecine conflict mounts, failed art and frantic artifice abounds, the mob mills without and cultured society turns its fickle back, it is for invaluable "housekeeper" Mrs. Freeman to oil troubled waters and kookie gofer Christobel Linley to dangle her feet therein.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/script/ASC-1585
Music:
-
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Genre:
Bogus historical comedy 125 min
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Case, The
Synopsis:
Victorian actor and esteemed lunatic Bramwell Topp finds a measure of success entertaining medical students.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Stables Theatre, Darlinghurst, Nsw
26 Jun 1996
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
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Genre:
80 min historical comedy
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: - Other: a single actor plays eight males and two female characters.
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/28230
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Corrector, The
Synopsis:
In 1737 alexander Cruden of aberdeen published his mighty Concordance - every word in the King James Bible given location, context and, often, definition. the book was more than three times the length of the Bible itself - all done with paper slips and ceaseless effort - and has never been out of print. Widely know for his eccentricity and abject poverty, Cruden spent several spells in the madhouse, largely because of his catastrophic relationships with women - or was it the ceaseless torrent of words that drove him and/or drove him mad? alexander died at his prayers in 1770 and we become privy to the life that flashes before his eyes at the last. Inspired, gaga or both?
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
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Genre:
75 min historical comedy
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Crunchy Armageddon Snaps
Synopsis:
Indelicately drizzled with the glittery dross of vulgar entertainment, flecked with silliness and generously spiced with popular insensitivities, Crunchy Armageddon Snaps is a rollicking black comedy pudding of divine intervention, phone sex, patter, absolute power, binge-drinking, rollicks, faith and free enterprise. From the cloudy, wafty bits of Heaven to the shabby pubs and half-arsed workplaces of Australia, drawing Pawns and Losers in their wake, minor gods Bob Frith and Terry Whitton lurch drunkenly towards the end of civilization as we probably don't imagine it.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
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Genre:
85 min black comedy
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Dead End
Synopsis:
Wannabe writer Grant Monk was the first to die - drugged, tortured and stapled to a table - just as he described in his own lurid screenplay Psycho Farm. and those extravagantly slaughtered corpses just keep on coming. as Grant's slasher flick apparently comes to life, rising detective Carol eldridge has two shady characters from Monk's milieu in her sights - Will and Christopher - but not simply as suspects. Carol has her own plans.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
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Genre:
75 min black comedy
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Deeming
Synopsis:
the world breathed a sigh of relief in 1892 when Frederick Bailey Deeming was hanged in Melbourne Gaol from the beam that killed Ned Kelly. Some thought Deeming was Jack the Ripper but the truth was no less remarkable - he was an international thief, philanderer, swindler, con man, bigamist and utterly ruthless murderer. Born in the abject squalor of a British madhouse and without formal education, Deeming juggled scores of identities, frequently passing himself off as a Lord. the case gripped and appalled the nation and the world. Meanwhile, at the lavish alexandra theatre, actor/manager alfred Dampier was desperate for a success and came up with the idea of Reality theatre - a play plundering the Deeming story that would change as the chase and case progressed. apparently by coincidence the cast included one alfred Harford who had known Deeming in South Africa. Dampier's meloDrama, called Willful Murder!, was a smash hit but as the frantic season progressed and the borders between terrible fact and gruesome fantasy crumbled, an awful possibility emerged linking the appalling urges of Fredrick Bailey Deeming and the colourful characters acting out his life - and all in the name of art.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
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Genre:
120 min historical meloDrama
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Indecent Exposures
Synopsis:
When beautiful alien Sylvia eureka and her parents beam into our dimension, they make two other grave mistakes: landing in a TV studio used for the soap opera Three Way Street and landing when media mogul Reynard Dobel is collecting incriminating evidence from a tryst with supermodel Claudia Persettimole. With now unemployed soapie favourites Bessemer Rune and Lorraine Wrist, Reynard creates an eccentrically authoritarian society on the Three Way Street set to keep the Story of the Century confused, captive and compliant. But soon the studio is ringed with curious eyes: police, journalists, government agents, trade unionists and the Universal Fellowship of Leslie Cantwellites. Something must be done! Reynard must act.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
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Genre:
100 min black comedy
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Islands
Synopsis:
In a secret enclave for the disgustingly rich and disgusting, staff psycho-killer Pat and resident sex toy ambrose find their relatively comfy world crumbling.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Cat And Fiddle Hotel, Balmain, Nsw
12 Mar 2002
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
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Genre:
100 min black comedy
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/19758
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Men Only
Synopsis:
You're sitting in a bar, a real bar, drinking, perhaps listening to some over-loud, blokey rock music, perhaps wondering why the women in the room are fondling false moustaches. One by one, four men emerge from among your fellow drinkers, each with a remarkable, terrible, awful, fabulous, grotesque tale, or part thereof; each in your face, like operatic soloists, each offering strange glimpses of and into secret men's business. First comes Mick: steely evAngelist for the Norse gods, semi-derelict, drink taken and bludging for more, he preaches Odin's part in bringing poetry to the world. then come the recollections of W.A.J.C Twirler Lingfield whose bloody and bizarre experiences in the service of our land bring strange engagements and satisfactions. Malfunctioning Robbie is happy to spend his final hours quietly in your company but the odious Cec - henchman of corrupt media mogul Clewster Neuting - feels a form of justice snapping at his heels and doesn't like than at all. When you've met this quartet perhaps it will become clear why the blokes want these dark portraits and desolate landscapes kept to themselves.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
70 min black comedy
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Neighbours
Synopsis:
about the communities obbsession with reality TV - http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/7078
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Cat And Fiddle Hotel, Balmain, Nsw
06 Jun 2001
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
satire
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/7078
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Pan
Synopsis:
A show based on the story by J.M. Barrie with help from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. - http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/28464
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Capitol Theatre, Haymarket, Nsw
01 Jun 2000
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
adaptation TYA
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/28464
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Peter Pan
Synopsis:
A spectacular production, with the kind of special effects - from lasershow scenery to traditional flying set changes - with which the modern musical has made audiences familiar. - http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/28207
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Regal Theatre, Subiaco, Wa
24 Jul 1996
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
pantomime
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/28207
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Punch And Judy
Synopsis:
a hard-hitting tale of hard hitting. Contains sausages, nasty violence, mockery, a bloody lot of swearing, monosodium glutamate, iconoclastic innuendo, adult concepts, blunt instruments and very little scenery.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
100 min black comedy
Parts:
Male: 2 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Rat Follies
Synopsis:
Darlinghurst was Australia's heart of darkness in the burlesque aftermath of World War II - a heaving slum, home to prostitutes, gangsters, druggies, con-men, crooked cops, petty crims, sly grog, bent pollies, psychos and SP bookies. the rest comprised poor, honest battlers doing their best in difficult times. Or so it seemed. Several battlers were further afflicted by spectacularly unpleasant Thallium poisoning, NSW being the only state where deadly Thallium-based rat poison could be purchased freely. Unpleasant husbands, friends and relatives surplus to requirement, fared ill on the statistical spike. Rat Follies is based on the true stories of Balmain footie star and league international Bobby Lulham, who accidentally drank the suicide draught mixed by his remorse-wracked mother-in-law and lover Veronica Monte; down-to-earth Beryl Hague, driven to desperation by mindless brutality; Yvonne Butler/Fletcher, who lost two entirely unsatisfactory husbands to the popular, cruel but effective rodenticide; and, above all, Darlinghurst's 'saintly' grannie Caroline Grills who sent two step-mothers, a sister and brother-in-law to their reward while striving to murder her sister-in-law and two young friends in nearby Redfern. as told from the deathbed of a relatively minor, and not too trustworthy, cop, set in Sydney's gothic sewers, satirically seasoned and performed by a nimble ensemble of rat-like actors with rat puppet support, Rat Follies is an epic entertainment and seamless spectacle, a dark circus tumbling on to the highest courts of the land and the tabloid-tailored trial of Mrs. Caroline Grills - aunt Thally, Loony extraordinaire.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Booksellers:
Genre:
130 min epic black comedy
Parts:
Male: 8 Female: 8 Other: Doublings are approximate, cast may be smaller than specified.
Further Reference:
-
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Sandinista!
Synopsis:
Devised by the Great Canadian theatre Company. "With widespread popular support, the revolutionary Sandinistas won power in Nicaragua from the vicious and corrupt Samoza regime. Six years and a democratic election later, the new government lives in the shadow of the fear of U.S. intervention - a real fear, given the long history of the United States' complicity in repression in the region". - http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/21303
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
New Theatre, Newtown, Nsw
09 Feb 1985
Organisations:
New Theatre (Sydney, N.S.W.)
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Booksellers:
Genre:
play with music
Parts:
Male: 9 Female: 7 Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/21303
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Tales Of Dark Knitting
Synopsis:
Old, sick and relentlessly rancorous, Lachlan and April spray bile about a crumbling domestic scene but evidence suggests they were just a dream or vision of self-proclaimed nutter, cheese enthusiast and Roman merchant Duncan Webb or, then again, perhaps less probably, Stephanie the notorious Kept Woman or, possibly, little-known Cleaner. Apparently an artists' agent, Tina only knows of the individuals we know as Lachlan, April, Duncan and Stephanie through the apparent work of Ray, apparently an artist - or so it seems. there is every reason to believe that a key figure in the story of these individuals is Taxi Driver and aspiring writer Ian Proctor who spends two days trapped in his taxi with librarian Angela - much to the annoyance of her media hostile husband Don. Ian, in his aspiring way, has written not only of Lachlan and April but Duncan and Stephanie, to say nothing of Tina and Ray. Don seems to know nothing about the mysterious secrets of his librarian spouse but when Angela's shrieky Mum finds her son-in-law stabbed through the windpipe, and dead to boot, Detective Gurr must untangle her twisted suburban tale. . . or not. All this, extra cheese, and the body parts of four mysterious men in the fridge! And Satan!
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Belvoir Street Downstairs Theatre, Surry Hills, Nsw
29 Mar 1994
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
Absurdist black comedy
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/23757
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Time Machine, The
Synopsis:
Travel 800,000 years into an amazing future where horror and wonder mingle in a spectacle not to be missed.
Notes:
adaptation of HG Wells' the Time Machine
1st Produced:
Cat And Fiddle Hotel, Balmain, Nsw
07 Aug 2001
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
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Genre:
adaptation
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/7125
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Vapours
Synopsis:
-
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
Lookout Theatre, Woollahra, NSW
20 Apr 1995
Organisations:
Marking Masculinity Project
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
-
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/106606
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Vathek
Synopsis:
Fabulously wealthy and spectacularly eccentric, William Beckford (1759-1844) produced his glittering gothic masterpiece the History of Caliph Vathek at the age of 22. With rare empathy for the world of Islam, Beckford charts the operatic decline of his Faustus-like anti-hero literally from the summit of his gigantic tower on the fabled site of Babel to the appalling subterranean halls of the fallen angel eblis and eternal damnation. Urged on by his appalling mother Carathis, and pawn to the terrible, bloodthirsty demon Giaour, Vathek's ambition, greed, vanity, lust, blasphemy and sensual excess drive his epic journey to disaster. This fast-paced adaptation offers a fear and wonder-filled showcase for bravura performance, bold direction, shrewdly sumptuous design, puppetry, trickery, dazzling light, dance and wild theatricality.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
130 min epic gothic romance
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Who Slew Reg Smedley?
Synopsis:
Six kidnap victims have little in common - a dead greengrocer called Reg and a will to survive.
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
-
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
http://Australianplays.org/
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
100 min black comedy
Parts:
Male: 3 Female: 3 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Yobbo Nowt
Synopsis:
Set in Liverpool, england. About Marie, a working-class ex-housewife who goes on a personal journey to discover the capitalist nature of society, and the consequences of capitalism in an industrial city like Liverpool. - http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/21434
Notes:
-
1st Produced:
New Theatre, Newtown, Nsw
15 Jun 1985
Organisations:
New Theatre (Sydney, N.S.W.)
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
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Genre:
musical theatre
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 8 Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/21434
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Your Own Lee Young Once
Synopsis:
the stage autobiography of a nobody - and to that extent, of considerable historical interest. - http://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/60029
Notes:
written by Frank Gauntlett and Lee Young
1st Produced:
Lookout Theatre, Woollahra, Nsw
07 Dec 1995
Organisations:
-
1st Published:
-
Music:
-
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Genre:
Autobiographical
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
https://www.ausstage.edu.au/pages/event/60029
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