AustLit

'Award-winning playwright Sean Riley's latest play for emerging adults is a modern retelling of The Oresteia – the epic trilogy from the classical Greek theatre canon  that charts the destruction of literature’s most dysfunctional family; Agamemnon and his wife Clytemnestra, and their children Electra and Orestes. 

'Set somewhere in suburban Adelaide, a family rips itself apart in the time-honoured tradition of Greek tragedy.

'In its classically staged form, The Oresteia runs a staggering five and a half hours, but  This Bloody House is an adrenalin-fuelled eighty minutes, reimagined and relocated in the dark underbelly of contemporary society.    In a world of violence, drugs, guns, and biker gang warfare, this family are now the most dangerous of criminal dynasties.  Brutal, retributive, and unforgiving, the plays are awash with familial rivalries, jealousies and revenge.'

Source: Bakehouse Theatre.

'“Dad has become a stranger. I feel like a visitor in my own home.”'

'Sixteen-year-old Max is becoming an angry young man, seduced by risk and danger. Eleven-year-old Darcy has become too big for his boots, alienating friends and teachers alike and fourteen year old Chloe (through whose eyes we view the story) is silently noticing a change in Tom, their Dad…Little changes, at first, but later…'

'As months pass, Tom’s condition worsens; his behaviour growing ever more strange and unpredictable. The fabric of this tight-knit family is stretched to its limits. Loyalties are tested and blood-ties challenged, and when hard decisions need to be made, this family drama builds to an explosive and heartwrenching conclusion.' (Source: http://comeoutfestival.com.au/events/the_visitors )

'In 1713 Antonio Vivaldi (known as The Red Priest) was a composer-in-residence at the Ospedale della Pieta, an orphanage for girls, in Venice.

'In Sean Riley's first radio drama, he constructs a fictional encounter between Vivaldi and an orphan girl, Agatha, who posseses the voice of an angel, but is hideously deformed. Vivaldi composes a mass to feature Agatha's superb voice, but is it intended to help or exploit Agatha?'

Source: ABC Radio National website, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/airplay/stories/2006/1732451.htm
Cited: 10 October 2006

'An epic chronicle of the refugee experience, Beautiful Words weaves together three very different stories of survival, told through the eyes of three children in different times and places. The outcome is heart-rending, humorous, and surprising by turns. From the horrors of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in the final days of World War II, to Taliban-ruled Kabul, to present day Australia, this enthralling play presents a rich tapestry of human experience, overlapping lives, and the bonds that unite generations.'

Source: Currency Press website, http://www.currency.com.au/
Sighted: 12/05/2008

We know, and absolutely don’t want to know, how a single action, a single impulse can change everything. This is what we mean by a life-or-death moment, that split second, as we call it, when something irrevocable occurs and it can’t be changed back. This is the moment that can’t be believed even when it is re-lived repeatedly, the moment that is still true when you wake up the next day. It is when we know our lives are never going to be the same again. "The Last Acre" is a good play which has been brought to the stage by a dedicated and very able company. As a study of family it conjures contradictions and complex intimacies vividly and unsentimentally, as a portrait of a family paralysed, both actually and metaphorically, it is able to show resolution and some hope without being simplistic.

(Source: Trove)