Secret Bridesmaids' Business

McAulay Studio, Hong Kong Arts Centre
3-7 July 2007

Hong Kong Players presents Elizabeth Coleman’s smash hit – Secret Bridesmaids’ Business, a comedy about secrets and lies, weddings, friendship, loyalty... and sex.

With less then 24 hours to go until Meg’s big-budget wedding (which Meg and her mother Colleen have been planning for six months and 33 YEARS!) the bridesmaids, Lucy and Angela, accidentally find out that the groom MIGHT have had an affair. Now faced with the dilemma: to tell Meg, or not to tell Meg, they discover that sometimes there are no right answers when it comes to “doing what’s best for your friend”.

Secret Bridesmaids’ Business dares to ask: can the big day, the theatre of the wedding itself, become more important than the new life ahead? Should the carefully folded invitations, the ribbons at the end of the pews, the bridesmaids’ shoes and the bridal table arrangements take absolute precedence?

In asking these questions, the play deftly exposes the insanity that can be created when the wedding juggernaut threatens to swerve out of control.

Secret Bridesmaids’ Business first opened in Melbourne in 1999, starring Tara Morice (Strictly Ballroom). It won several awards and has since been performed in theatres around the world.

About the playwright

Elizabeth Coleman was born in Newcastle, Australia in 1962 and graduated from University of New South Wales and National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) as a playwright.

She has written for Australian television series: Something in the Air, Sea Change, Good Guys Bad Guys, Heartbreak High, Police Rescue and The Flying Doctors.

Her plays include Sometimes I Wish I Was Jana Wendt (1988), It's My Party (And I'll Die If I Want To) (1993) which was performed off-Broadway with F. Murray Abraham in the role of the father, and This Way Up (2001).