Sydney lawyer’s 10th play…
Jewish eastern suburbs writer/lawyer Tony Laumberg’s latest comedy opens 5 August….and this time national security is at stake!
Nastassja Djalog, Mark McCann and Tricia Youlden
Tony Laumberg
The latest in a series of comedies that have been sell-out successes, “Undercover Lawyer” is a laugh-fest is the writer’s 10th play and 10th collaboration with director Richard Cotter.
It also stars popular stage veteran Tricia Youlden and scrumptious young Paddington actress Nastassja Djalog as the mysterious ASIO operative. Also featured in the play is young actor Daniel Felkai (who plays a bizarre animal psychic…) and Cotter himself, stepping on stage in a hilarious cameo.
The production will open this week at the Tap Gallery theatre in the heart of Sydney’s lively Inner East.
And with the gallery beneath the theatre currently housing the provocative “Nudes on Tap” exhibition, Laumberg reckons – with a cheeky grin – that obviously the TAP has something for everyone! Naughty man.
Undercover Lawyer – which brings back two of the playwright’s most popular characters, pompous St Ives lawyer Henry Crowley and his boozy wife Margaret – is also a good-natured dig at the lifestyle in the ‘leafy North Shore’. In Laumberg’s own words, “People on the North Shore might think it’s God’s country but it sure as hell isn’t the Eastern Suburbs!”
Bowing to popular demand, Tony Laumberg has dusted off his most popular and enduring characters, pompous CBD lawyer Henry Crowley and his sarcastic and perpetually inebriated wife Margaret in a new play – a laugh-filled tale of espionage, lies and deception, set in the genteel environs of leafy St Ives.
A lawyer by day (“but don’t hold it against me”), Laumberg is the writer of sell-out comedy hits that include Unsolicited Male, Lawyers in Love, My Fair Lawyer and Bondi Legal.
In this play, Henry is convinced by an alluring young ASIO agent, Pamela Goodbody, to spy on his neighbour, a gifted animal psychic, little knowing that ASIO not only suspects Goodbody of being a double agent but has even enlisted his own wife, Margaret, to spy on him!
Henry goes deep undercover to unearth evidence that his neighbour is a foreign spy but he doesn’t take long to find himself way over his head in trouble. Who can he trust? Is the animal psychic really a threat to national security? Will Henry be able to increase his hourly rate?
This madcap tale of spies and spouses stars Nastassja Djalog, Daniel Felkai, Mark McCann, Tricia Youlden and – jumping up from his director’s chair in a comic cameo – Richard Cotter.
Undercover Lawyer opens at the 100-seat TAP Gallery in Darlinghurst (capacity increased just for this production) on Friday, 6 August and runs until 29 August.
Laumberg and Cotter are also actively scouring Sydney’s East for a larger, permanent home for their long-term dream: the Sydney Comedy Theatre.
