A suspenseful yarn about the secrets we keep and the cost of keeping them is next in JUTE Theatre's 2008 season of new Australian plays.

Tiptoe, written by Cairns playwright and scholar Michael Beresford, is based in the gold-rush town of Charters Towers, known to locals as Charlie’s Trousers.

It is a gothic tale about three elderly sisters, highly respected in their community, who have spent their long lifetimes keeping a terrible secret.

When young Brisbane artist Emma Lee travels to Charters Towers for a public art project, she is inspired by legendary vagrants Annie Bags and Tiptoe Jen, from the town’s gold mining past.

Emma is driven to find out the truth about Tiptoe Jen’s mysterious disappearance, and is convinced the elderly sisters, Winsome, Ruby and Dot, have the answers.

Once started on her dark journey of discovery, she finds there is no turning back.Tiptoe is a work of fiction, but inspired by the legendary stories of Annie Bags and Tiptoe Jen.

Rumour has it that Annie Bags continually walked back and forth from Charters Towers to Townsville, sleeping rough, and always accompanied by Tiptoe Jen and a trail of dogs, cats and goats.

It was said Annie Bags was an accomplished pianist who once played in wealthy homes, with her hair in an elaborate coiffure maintained with a paste made of lime.

Tiptoe surveys what was once the gritty realities of life in frontier towns, where the lines separating right and wrong can become blurred.

The director, Brisbane-based David Fenton, was involved in the development of the play over a number of years. His vision for Tiptoe is a kind of stylised underworld, where secrets, grief, lies and fears reside and occasionally rise up to be reckoned with.

"The world must be dirty, unstable, hidden, and cluttered with secrets.

The people must be threadbare – as if they have come up out of the ground, out of the dirt – as if they live just above the precipice of the mineshafts. They are all just keeping their heads above the secrets.

This is a world where history haunts the present," he says.

Tiptoe features Carol Burns, well known for her role as Frankie in TV’s Prisoner and more recently in the film Gettin’ Square, Suellen Maunder, Susan Prince and Kylee McDowall, who is welcomed back to the JUTE stage as Emma Lee.

Tiptoe opens at the JUTE Theatre Friday, July 4 and runs until July 19. To book phone 4031 9555.

Share this article