Brink Productions Looking for Alibrandi

Season 2025

Commissioning Credit:

Originally commissioned by Malthouse Theatre and co-presented by Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir

Looking for Alibrandi

By Vidya Rajan

Based on the novel by Melina Marchetta

Josie Alibrandi is in her final year of high school. Whip-smart and aspirational, she is a third-generation Italian teenager and scholarship kid, with the shadow of a family curse and a penchant for rule-breaking. Juggling grades, boys, and the claustrophobia of an overbearing nonna and saintly mother, Josie’s life becomes tangled in the webs of class, identity, and family history as she finds her place in a changing world.

Iconic novel and cult movie, Looking for Alibrandi is the honest and empowered portrait of 1990s Mediterranean culture that spoke for the first time about systemic racism in Australia from a migrant perspective. It defined a generation and to this day resonates with those caught in the stranglehold of identity and othering in this country.

Award-winning director Stephen Nicolazzo (Loaded, Merciless Gods) brought Melina Marchetta’s iconic best-selling novel - which she adapted into the cult 2000 movie - to the stage for the first time, where Vidya Rajan’s AWGIE nominated adaptation joined three generations of women in a passionate, heart wrenching, and unmissable rendering of the Australian classic. With live passata sauce making, traditional Italian music and a soundtrack of Australian pop classics, Looking for Alibrandi is a vibrant theatrical experience full of passion, laughs, and beauty.

Now, as part of Brink’s next chapter, this hilarious, spirited and heart-warming production returns for a national tour starring original cast members Chanella Macri, Lucia Mastrantone, Jennifer Vuletic, Ashton Malcom, Riley Warner and Chris Asimos.

Performed in English and Italian

Director: Stephen Nicolazzo

Writer: Vidya Rajan

Set and Costume Design: Kate Davis

Lighting Design: Katie Sfetkidis

Sound Design: Daniel Nixon

Musicians: Rosa Voto and Renato Vacerca

Tarantella Choreography: Rosa Voto

Dialect Coach: Paulo Bongiovanni

Cultural and Language Consultant: Lucia Mastrantone

★★★★★

“Clever, heartening and well-crafted. Nicolazzo’s passion for the piece is palpable; his bold, stylised production is rich with symbolism but stark enough to allow the actors to give beautifully, distinctive performances full of detail and gravitas.”

Theatre Matters

★★★★1/2 "This comical and beautifully honest look at cultural identity, class and trauma is brought to vivid life in director Stephen Nicolazzo and writer Vidya Rajan’s ridiculously enjoyable sunbeam of a production.”

Arts Hub

★★★★ “Chanella Macri is perfectly cast”

The AU Review

★★★★ “A heart-warming tale whose humour, honesty, radiant social relevance and narrative longevity can survive not only novel and film incarnations, but now, I’m delighted to report, a stage play too."

Theatre Now

“Dark and uncompromising. It will resonate with subsequent waves of migrants”

The Australian

“Achingly raw…painfully, beautifully rendered…Timeless”

The Guardian

Image Credit Daniel Boud

• Genre - Theatre
• $45.00
• 9 September 2025
• 140 minutes
• 19:00
• Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre.
• Auditorium
• 12+
• 
  Frequent strong language; themes of suicide; mild violence Suitable 12+