Batfa Award-winning actress Miriam Margoyles is coming to Glen Street to share her rare and wonderful insight into the life and times of Charles Dickens.

Miriam is performing her one woman tour-de-force, Dickens’ Women, exclusively at Glen Street in February. And now you also have the opportunity to share a literary lunch with Margolyes as she reveals her ‘behind the scenes’ insight into all things Dickens.

Presenting her comprehensive and entertaining exposé of Dickens, his writing, and the real-life women who were the influence for the characters in his novels, Margolyes’ visit to Sydney in 2012 also coincides with the bicentenary of Dickens’ birth. So there’s plenty to get excited about!

Tickets cost $49 and include a two course meal.

Following David Scheel’s Music at the Glen Concert, MAESTRO: A Celebration of Musical Eccentrics, Glen Street Theatre will host a special lunch in Sorlies Restaurant.

Treat your loved one to a delicious light lunch and unwind with a glass of bubbly. Plus you will get to meet David Scheel!

Lunch will be served from 12.30pm.

BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL.

Menu includes:
Mini gourmet assorted quiches
Butternut pumpkin pie
Creamy egg and watercress sandwich
Chicken and almond finger

Mini custard fruit flan
Baileys rocky road fudge
Toffee strawberries
Rosewater meringue

Each year, The Actors’ Forum presents five fully staged play readings at Sorlies, Glen Street Theatre. These are weekend matinee presentations, performed by high profile professional actors working with seasoned directors. The plays, by Australian and overseas playwrights, include revivals of popular classics and contemporary plays, as well as exciting works which are rarely performed by commercial or subsidised companies. Now in its 17th year, the Forum is a non-profit group run and administered by volunteer actors and directors. This means prices can be kept to a minimum $20 full price and $15 concession.

The performances in 2012 are as follows:

Sat 10 March @ 1.30pm – Dial M for Murder
Sat 19 May @ 1.30pm -Sanctuary
Sat 14 July @ 1.30pm – Fallen Angels
Sat 11 August @ 1.30pm – Gulls
Sat 13 October @ 1.30pm – On Golden Road

Special guest appearances from the Chorus’ quartets and the Manly Warringah Pipe Band offer a show with variety and some surprises.

Northern Beaches Chorus is the Community Choir winner of the 2011 Sydney Eisteddfod.

Absolutely Acappella! has been made possible with the support of a Warringah Council Cultural Development Grant.

Running time: 2 hours and 10 minutes, including one interval.

Her new book, Miles off Course is the exciting sequel to A Decline in Prophets (2011) and her debut novel A Few Right Thinking Men (2010), which was shortlisted for the prestigious 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. Don’t miss Sulari when she comes to Glen Street Theatre to speak first hand about her latest literary triumph.

About the book:
Opening early in 1933 in the superlative luxury of the Blue Mountains’ Hydro Majestic hotel, Miles off Course finds Rowland Sinclair and his companions ensconced in croquet and pre-­dinner cocktails, that is, until the Harry Simpson, vanishes.
An Indigenous stockman, Simpson has a hold over the Sinclair brothers that is both mysterious and unusual. The Hydro Majestic is rapidly abandoned for the High Country of NSW where Rowland searches for Simpson and becomes embroiled in a much darker conspiracy.

“This latest instalment once again follows Rowland and his entourage of bohemians into an extraordinary time in Australian history. It brings Rowland to the Snowy Mountains, which is my back yard, and drags him into a rural hotbed of abduction, murder and global subterfuge,” says Sulari.

“An elusive killer, a charming sleuth … glossy, original and appealingly Australian.”
The Australia Women’s Weekly

“A devilish sense of humour.”
Australian Book Review

“A sparkling crime series … Evelyn Waugh meets Agatha Christie.”
The Age

Tickets cost $49 and include a two course meal.

Prize-winning and internationally acclaimed author Elliot Perlman was inspired to write his latest novel The Street Sweeper while living in Manhattan opposite the renowned Sloan Kettering Hospital. Seven years in the making, it explores memory, love, racism, guilt, astonishing heroism and unexpected kindness.

Spanning the 20th century to the present and the globe from New York to Melbourne, Chicago, Warsaw, Berlin and Auschwitz, The Street Sweeper explores how breathtakingly close we are to lives, that at first seem so far away, and how it is that the stories of only very few of those lives survive to become history.

Informed by first person interviews conducted across the globe, by meticulous research and even by some of the author’s own family story, The Street Sweeper is epic in scope and a devastating, page-turning, remarkable feat of storytelling.

About the Author:
Melbourne-based barrister Elliot Perlman came to prominence with his debut novel Three Dollars (1998) won numerous awards including the Age Book of the Year and Betty Trask Awards (UK), and which was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, before being turned into a film starring David Wenham and earning Elliot an AFI Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His follow up, The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming (1999), was a national bestseller in the US; named a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice” and received the Steele Rudd Award for best Australian short story collection.

His third book, Seven Types of Ambiguity (2003) cemented his international reputation. A national bestseller in the US, France, the UK, Germany and Australia; it was deemed “a colossal achievement… a tour de force” by The Observer (UK) and “a complete success” by Le Monde in France, A New York Times Book Review “Notable Book of the Year” and “Editor’s Choice” it was also short-listed for the Miles Franklin Award.

Tickets cost $49 and include a two course meal.