Thirty years on, Muggleton is about to play a strikingly different character who, nonetheless, shares Chrissie’s East End accent and carnal appetites. That character is Patrick White’s Alma Lusty, a middle-aged landlady who attempts to seduce her young male lodger at her husband’s wake.”  - THE AUSTRALIAN (National, Newspaper)

READ FULL ARTICLE: http://bit.ly/wAyrHD

Well known to audiences around Australia from her role in televison’s Prisoner in the ‘70s Muggelton’s greatest success has been on the stage.

Written by playwright Willy Russell, Blood Brothers tells the story of two brothers separated at birth who grow up at opposite ends of the social divide.

Muggleton has probably performed more of Willy Russell’s work than any other actress, her production of his play Shirley Valentine toured the country repetitively for over ten years and in the early ‘90s she appeared in a production of his other well known work, Educating Rita.

READ FULL INTERVIEW HERE!

It’s easy to understand why. Muggleton has wowed our audiences, most notably in Russell’s Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine, repeatedly and unfailingly for so many years that the actress and playwright are inextricably linked in our hearts and minds. But before you make that booking (call 9228 1455), a few words of warning: Unlike Shirley and Rita, Blood Brothers is a big cast show, and a musical to boot.

While Muggleton’s Mrs Johnstone is unquestionably its star vehicle, she’s not the show’s entire focus, or even its central character. And while it shares Russell’s concern with Britain’s class system and the trouble it causes, this is a darker, ultimately tragic, story with a much different mood than his other hits.

READ FULL REVIEW HERE!

Westco Productions was established several years ago by Fred Mafrica as the production arm behind his new show, The Couch. Right from the start, The Couch was intended to give Perth audiences their own locally-produced talk/variety program,  and we continue to this day to be the only such show., The Couch promotes the people and talent of the Western Australian community. We provide everything one would expect from a chat show – music and movie reviews,  celebrity interviews,  charity promotions,  cooking,  entertainment news and plenty of live music and dancing.

This Week on The Couch - Episode 388

Friday the 11th November at 3pm WST and Tuesday the 15th November at 730pm WST

Prisoner Star and Lead Actress from the new Stage Play “Blood Brothers” Amanda Muggleton

Melanie DeCull from Taz Entertainment returns to The Couch with her Theatre Show Review segment

Healthy Choices with Tegan Benfell talks about smart Christmas presents alternatives

Producer and Director of the Film, “We Stick Together” Daniel Tenni comes in to talk about the movies Screening at the Astor Theatre on the 16th November 2011

Music this week is by Amanda Canzurlo and DJ Gian and Dancers who perfom their new song “ Never Let Me Go”

Muggleton should know. With a string of film, television and theatre credits to her name, the British-born actor is one of Australia’s best-loved performers. From her early days as Chrissie Latham on the television series Prisoner, to stage roles such as Maria Callas in Master Class, Muggleton combines versatility with unfailing charisma.

Muggleton is in Perth to play Mrs Johnstone in Willy Russell’s award-winning musical, Blood Brothers, which will be performed at the Metcalfe Playhouse this month. In Australia Muggleton’s name is synonymous with Willy Russell’s plays and she is as excited about starring in Blood Brothers as local director John Senczuk must be about snaffling her services….. (© WEST AUSTRALIAN)

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

PRISONER! AMANDA MUGGLETON (“Chrissie Latham”) and VAL LEHMAN (“Bea Smith”) were guests on this Friday,  21st October’s “Mornings With Kerri-Anne” (NINE Network, TV) at 09:30AM AEST. The girls were on the TV Show screened nationally, discussing all things “PRISONER” and the upcoming Fundraiser Event for Audacious Dreaming with stand-in hosts,  Amanda Keller and Jonesy!

The full segment is now online at the NineMSN website, STREAM IT HERE!

Visit “Mornings With Kerri-Anne”
http://channelnine.ninemsn.com.au/kerrianne

Visit Audacious Dreaming
www.audaciousdreaming.com

Visit Screen Star Events
www.screenstarevents.com

Amanda and Fiona spoke about Prisoner in brief as well as the upcoming ‘ICONS OF AUS TV’ on 11th November in St Kilda, put on by UK promoters Screen Star Events. The fundraising Event is in support of Audacious Dreaming and a short film (starring Prisoner actress GLENDA LINSCOTT). Glenda’s stars in ‘A Fairytale Life’, which tells the story of Sandy, a woman infected with the HIV virus by her husband and his irresponsible sexual behaviour.

www.audaciousdreaming.com

www.screenstarevents.com

AMANDA Muggleton and original cast member Dennis Olsen are set to star in a new production of Patrick White’s The Ham Funeral by the State Theatre Company of South Australia next year.

The play, about a newly widowed woman’s attempts to seduce a young poet at her husband’s wake, premiered more than 50 years ago. The new production will be presented as part of the Adelaide Festival, on the centenary of Patrick White’s birth.

A young poet moves into a squalid rooming house run by the basement-bound Mr and Mrs Lusty, a bloated, gluttonous pair. When her husband dies abruptly, Mrs Lusty announces a grand funeral featuring a lavish feast, ‘an ‘am funeral’, in his honour. Driven by her incontinent appetite, she attempts to seduce the young poet at her husband’s wake, with comically tragic consequences.

Written by Australia’s only Nobel Prize winner for Literature, The Ham Funeral has long held iconic status as a misunderstood moment of shocking modernism in Australian theatre history. Igniting controversy when it was rejected for the 1962 Adelaide Festival of Arts as too ‘difficult’ for the general public to understand, its premiere production by the Adelaide University Theatre Guild at the Union Theatre in 1961 was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike.

A strangely beautiful human puppet show—part vaudeville, part lyric poem, and part gothic drama —it now enjoys legendary status as one of the most intriguingly original plays in Australian theatre history, offering audiences an antidote to what Patrick White called ‘the dreary, dun-coloured offspring of journalistic realism’.

2012 will mark the centenary of Patrick White’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the play’s world premiere in Adelaide.

Presented by the State Theatre Company of South Australia and Adelaide Festival.

Director – Adam Cook

Designer – Ailsa Paterson

Composer – Stuart Day

Lighting Designer – Gavan Swift

Cast – Luke Clayson,  Jonathan Mill,  Amanda Muggleton,  Dennis Olsen,  Jacqy Phillips and Geoff Revell

TICKETS – State Theatre Company Website

READ FULL REVIEW – CLICK HERE!