But Mr Melancholy, a comedy by Australian playwright Matt Cameron which has that subject and characters, has been a hit since it premiered in Sydney in 1995.

It won that year's Australian National Playwrights' Centre New Dramatist Award, leading to a production being staged in New York.

Its quality and unusual storyline has also led to it being included on Australian high school reading lists, with drama students often performing scenes from it.

Morgan Clyne, a Year 11 student at Maitland's Hunter Valley Grammar School who is a tutor of Maitland Repertory Theatre's junior acting classes, as well as a student in the senior classes, is a fan of the play's script, and persuaded the company's board members to let her put together a production which will have a four-performance season from March 13 to 15.

She points to it as using absurdism in very accessible ways so that audience members find it very easy to follow the changes taking place.

"I'm a big fan of the script," she said.

Morgan, who is 16, has cast four actors aged 14 to 17 as the play's characters.

Campbell Knox is Ollie, the lighthouse keeper, who keeps stealing sand from the beach, and is the title's melancholic figure with Gabrielle Johns as Delores, the circus clown who is fed up with her job and goes on a sea cruise to get away from it, only to find herself going overboard in a large, floating wooden chest.

Imogen Langham is Enzo, a lighthouse caretaker who wants to get away from it and is trying to grow a milk-white moustache to become less recognisable; and Sophia Minter is Margot, the third lighthouse hermit, who thinks she could save death-prone fish by marrying them.

The show will be performed on the floor of Maitland Repertory's theatre, with audience members seated around three sides of the performance space.

The play has a large setting, with the lighthouse on a beach, with activities taking place in the sandhills on either side of the building, in its control room and in the store room where large object-carrying bags, boxes and tins are placed by the team members, so that they can use or sell them when the need arises.

Morgan Clyne notes the daily routines of the three hermits are turned upside down by the clown coming into the lighthouse in the big chest they think contains saleable items.

"But what does happen is the three find themselves after hiding away from real life for years," she said.

"It's absurdism that's very accessible in the way it has been written. And the play's storyline is very easy for watchers to follow."

The story certainly has many amusing moments, with a trunk that has been washed ashore having balloons attached to it, and a ventriloquist dummy found in a suitcase.

And the garb of the characters is unusual: Margot wears a tattered white wedding dress and Delores is initially seen in a ragged clown suit, a red wig, clown make-up and large clown shoes.

Morgan Clyne's theatre skills led her to be one of 14 high school students selected in 2019 for the annual week-long Bell Shakespeare Theatre Company work experience program in Sydney.

The candidates who applied from across Australia did acting routines for the team who made the choices, and got to go backstage and see the actors in Bell Shakespeare's production of Much Ado About Nothing rehearsing, with the story given a contemporary setting.

Mr Melancholy has shows at Maitland Repertory Theatre on Friday, March 13, at 8pm, Saturday, March 14, at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday, March 15, at 2pm. Tickets: $18. Bookings: 0466 332 766 (10am - 3pm); www.maitlandreptheatre.org.

NEWCASTLE singer, writer and composer Maureen O'Brien has had audience members laughing loudly over the past three years at the first three episodes of a series called The Wireless Chronicles, which have members of a family and people they know reacting to a wireless series, The Devious Digit of Destiny, with the actors also playing the radio characters.

Each episode has been set in a different decade, beginning with the 1920s, with songs from the time presented.

A fourth and final Wireless Chronicles episode, with the title I Spy, is set in the Cold War era, the 1950s, when the new crazes, rock'n'roll and television, were just emerging in Australia.

Throw in a few car chases, a little illegal grog running, a moonlight robbery of parliament house, a bit of livestock and numerous other illegal activities.

The cast, who also supply the radio voices, includes Maureen O'Brien, Stevi Cannon, Grant Bailey, David Benge, John Dickeson, and Amanda Broberg, with Peter Sesselmann on guitar and sound effects.

The show's Newcastle run will be between March 11 and 15: The Royal Exchange Salon Theatre, Newcastle, Wednesday, March 11, at 8pm; St Matthews Church Hall, Georgetown, on Friday, March 13, at 7pm; St Augustine's Church Hall, Merewether, Saturday, March 14, at 2pm; The Dungeon, Adamstown Uniting Church, Sunday, March 15, at 6pm.

Tickets for each venue, except the one at Georgetown, are $25.

The Georgetown performance will also have a delicious soup supper; tickets $35. Bookings: 0421 072 444.