By Jen Silverman. Australian Premiere. Presented by Red Stitch Actor's Theatre, 2017.

Part gothic thriller and part black comedy, The Moors is a tale of seething tensions and repressed passions tormenting Agatha and Huldey, who are eking out an isolated life in the wild and inhospitable heath.

The bleak moors of England. The bleakest. The two sisters—one desperately unhappy, the other resolutely miserable, live with their elder brother, a scullery maid and their mastiff in a gloomy, old mansion. When a governess is summoned to their isolated home teeming with secrets and desires, what price might they pay for love?

Inspired by the lives and works of the 19th-century novel-writing Brönte sisters, Silverman harnesses the trappings of Victorian story-telling, suppressed eroticism, exquisite melodrama, and societal ills and exposes them through the portrayal of women in terrible living conditions – but with a contemporary twist.

Jen Silverman’s bizarre and vivid script is a unique exploration of identity, gender roles, sexuality and what it is to write your own story. 

This production marked the first collaboration between Nicolazzo, Little Ones Theatre and Red Stitch. The Moors played to a sell out season and received overwhelming acclaim from critics and audiences alike. In 2018, The Moors, was nominated for four Green Room Awards including Best Production, Best Director, Best Female Performer (Alex Aldrich) and Best Lighting Design.

Season ran: June 7th- July 9th, 2017 at Red Stitch Actor's Theatre, Melbourne.

With: Alexandra Aldrich, Zoe Boesen, Anna McCarthy, Olga Makeeva, Dion Mills, and Grace Lowry

DIirector: Stephen Nicolazzo
Writer: Jen Silverman
Set and Costume Design: Eugyeene Teh
Lighting Design: Katie Sfetkidis
Sound Design: Daniel Nixon
Stage Manager: Jacinta Anderson

★★★★½ "An erotically powerful, kink-queer parable."- Maxim Boon, The Music

★★★★ “The Moors is a scintillating engagement…Stephen Nicolazzo is the perfect director to bring all this to life. Bizarre and raunchy, subversive and disturbing, and deliciously funny all at once.”  – Cameron Woodhead, The Age

★★★★ "Nicolazzo is one of this country’s most exciting and compelling directors, recalling a young Barrie Kosky. His aesthetic is becoming distilled and mature, but he has lost none of the cheekiness and energy that made his Dangerous Liaisons so much fun. He’s determinedly contemporary – the pop culture references and in-jokes fly around the stage – but he also harks back to the knowing provocations of Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde before him."- Tim Byrne, Time Out

“Acting throughout is exquisite…Nicolazzo has crafted a visual, sensual and theatrical masterpiece.” – Chris Boyd, The Australian