STAGES with Peter Eyers

Pamela Rabe is one of Australia’s most highly regarded and awarded actors, recognised for her immense body of work on stage and screen. Canadian born, she is a graduate from the Playhouse Acting School, in Vancouver, and for the past several decades she has worked constantly in theatre across the country and around the world. 

Her work has encompassed State theatre companies and commercial theatre with dynamic performances in productions of new work and established classics that extend to God Of Carnage, Blithe Spirit, Dinner, The Misanthrope, The Marriage of Figaro, The Taming of the Shrew, A Moon for the Misbegotten, The Heidi Chronicles, The Cherry Orchard, Little Murders, As You Like It, Tristram Shandy, A Servant of Two Masters, Heartbreak House, Too Young For Ghosts, Visions, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Medea, Top Girls, 84 Charring Cross Road, The Winter’s Tale, The War of the Roses, The Serpent’s Teeth, Gallipoli, Season at Sarsparilla, The Lost Echo, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Holy Day, The Rover, Private Lives, Three Tall Women, Lost in Yonkers, Much Ado About Nothing, The Ham Funeral, Stronger, Miss Julie, Woman Bomb, Boston Marriage, The Apple Cart, Cho Cho San, Do Not Go Gentle, The Marriage of Bette & Boo, The Glass Menagerie, Ghosts, Footfalls, Seventeen, The Children, Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Hamlet.

Forays into the musical theatre include stellar turns in Name, Grey Gardens, A Little Night Music, Into the Woods, My Fair Lady and The Wizard of Oz.

Pamela won the 1997 AFI Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role for the film The Well and also appeared in the films Cosi, Sirens and Paradise Road. Her work in television includes The Secret Life of Us, Mercury, The Bite, Rosehaven, CrashBurn, Stingers, Deadloch, Bay of Fires and Wentworth.

An equally accomplished Director, her productions have adorned the stages of the Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company and Malthouse. They include Daniel Keene’s The Serpent’s Teeth: Citizens with The Actors Company, Elling, In The Next Room or The Vibrator Play and Solomon and Mary, Vanessa Bates’ Porn: Cake, and Jumpy by April de Angelis.

Pamela is presently on the Sydney stage with in Tracy Lett’s gothic family saga August: Osage County, playing Matriarch Violet Weston. The production plays at the Belvoir Theatre until December 22nd.

In 2025 she will direct and perform in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days at the STC and deliver a delicious Mrs Danvers in Rebecca for the MTC.

The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).

Guy Noble is an Australian musical composer, conductor, pianist and broadcaster.

He studied piano in the early 1980s at the Sydney Conservatorium. On a scholarship from the Australia Council he travelled to London where he worked for four years, including a stint as presenter on BBC Radio 3. 

In 1984, he was pianist in the Sydney Youth Orchestra and from 1984 to 1986 in the Australian Youth Orchestra. Noble was the inaugural recipient of the Brian Stacey Memorial Trust Award for emerging Australian conductors in 1998; the trust, in collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, financed the composition and recording of Noble's Flute Concerto, written for Jane Rutter. In 2022 he was appointed as the conductor and host of the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

Guy Noble regularly conducts the Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, West Australian, Tasmanian and Queensland Symphony orchestras and has worked with the Canberra Symphony, the Auckland Philharmonia and the Malaysian Philharmonic orchestras. He has been Musical Director and Musical Supervisor for musicals including Phantom of the Opera, Sunset Boulevard, Hello Dolly!, South Pacific, Man of La Mancha, How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Gypsy and the Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber.

He has recorded 12 CDs and ABC Classics in Australia has released his comedy sketch CD entitled The Guy Noble Radio Show.

He has also conducted and presented concerts with performers including Harry Connick Jr , Dianne Reeves, The Beach Boys, Ben Folds, Clive James, David Hobson, Yvonne Kenny, Teddy Tahu Rhodes and Randy Newman.

He is a former host of the ABC Classic FM radio breakfast program and he writes a regular column in Limelight magazine.

The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).

It’s the time of year where folk are jetting off on holidays - a key destination for many theatre fans is to head to the West End of London or the bright lights of Broadway - theatre precincts which guarantee excitement and awe.

Two gentlemen who make their own annual pilgrimage to the Great White Way or the West End -  are ‘Man in Chair’ Simon Parris, and Publicist Ian Phipps. The two theatre aficionados join the STAGES podcast regularly to offer a round-up of the shows they’d seen on recent trips to the theatre meccas. 

They offer abundant tips regarding what to see and how to secure tickets … so, they’re back again - this time to appraise their recent trips to New York and the Broadway season looming - a delicious appraisal of what is on, what has been, and what we can expect to see in coming months.

We also look at the abundance of musical offerings locally in 2025.

Melbourne-born, Suzanne Jones embarked on a career in main stage live entertainment after completing degrees in economics and music. She got her start in the entertainment industry as a sound engineer at Arts Centre Melbourne, which soon led to the role of Head of Sound for System Sound, touring large-scale music theatre productions around Australia and Asia.

After a hiatus of several years to explore other industries and interests – including a successful stint as a stockbroker – Suzanne’s love of live entertainment ultimately drew her back, joining the team at the Gordon Frost Organisation. During her time with GFO Suzanne produced dozens of Australian tours in various capacities, which provided the blueprint for her own dynamic and rewarding career pathway.

A dynamic commercial executive in the world of theatre and live events, Suzanne has drawn on her close connections with some of the world’s foremost creators of live entertainment and a global network of trusted promotional partners to deliver the world’s most loved and most prestigious productions to audiences in Australia and across the globe.

Her unerring commitment to bring the most iconic music theatre productions and live events to Australia has helped showcase the exceptional talent pool that exists in this country, across performance, design, technical and commercial roles, while delivering a positive social and economic impact.

Forming her own company, JONES, in 2017 was the culmination of this experience. It is under this banner that Suzanne co-produced the Australian tours of the Andrew Lloyd Webber production of The Wizard of Oz, Chicago The Musical, Pippin, 9 to 5 The Musical, Madagascar, 2:22 A Ghost Story. 

Recent productions have included the brand new interactive magic show Metaverse of Magic, the current tour of Chicago The Musical and the Australian premiere of Peter and the Starcatcher. 

Inspired by the idea that theatre has the capacity to transport the audience, Suzanne is committed to producing shows which offer audiences an opportunity to transcend everyday life to spend a few hours experiencing exciting new possibilities that shift their thinking. 

Suzanne is also motivated to contribute to her community and to act as a mentor for young, disadvantaged LGBTQI+ people by helping them to access opportunities that might otherwise seem out of reach.

In 2025 JONES Theatrical Group is looking forward to presenting Hadestown with our wonderful partners at Opera Australia as well as the return of the smash hit musical The Book of Mormon.

Suzanne lives in Sydney with her wife, Leone, and their dog, Boots.

The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).