There’s something to be said for expectations. When you go to a Cirque du Soleil show, you have plenty of them. In their new production Toruk: The First Flight, set in the world of the 2009 film Avatar, the iconic Montreal circus company have taken the expectations of a Cirque audience and thrown them out…
Miracle City is not your typical musical. The show’s director even dubbed it an anti-musical. It’s what you get when the shiny veneer of a Christian family of televangelists implode, live on air. The results are something that are ironic, funny and tragic in almost equal measure. This show first premiered at Sydney Theatre in…
He’s widely known as founder of the triumphant St Jermone’s Laneway Festival, the mind who brought a world’s first glamping experience as well as one of the city’s coolest bars, and the guy who turned a disused factory into a hipster chapel of love and creativity, but for his latest gift to Australia Jerome Borazio…
Sex is such a wonderful exploration of two bodies on an intimate and physical level. For some, it started at a very young age, for others they may have been late bloomers or are even still virgins. Either which way, sex has always been a conversation topic for everyone, but have we as a society…
Over the past six years, StageArt has fast become one of Melbourne’s leading theatre companies, allowing performers the opportunity to be a part of works that are fresh from Broadway and not necessarily major touring productions in Australia. MEMPHIS won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2010 and is loosely based on the true story…
Scattered throughout the varying levels of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, 36 singers stand lining the outskirts of the towering stair case wearing metallic-sliver hooded capes. As a Cellist plays, coloured lights flicker on and off, mirroring the rotating sound of the chorus who send their voices echoing throughout the open space. A Galaxy…
Michael Ball. Alfie Boe. Together live in concert. Review done. For what more really needs to be said? This is an incredible concert with two incredible theatre superstars, and it is truly an unmissable experience. The evening opens with the “Somewhere” overture from West Side Story before Ball and Boe take to the stage. The…
There’s something very appealing about translated fiction these days. Whether it’s because more amazing novels from other languages are being translated than ever before, or whether the quality of those translations is better than it is ever has been is something an expert would need to weigh in on. I can only comment on my…
Like the dawning of a new day, a gentle light envelops the stage. Slowly we become aware of a solitary figure crouching in the gloom, gradually becoming clearer. Aakash Odedra dressed in traditional flowing Indian robes, unravels his body and dances across the stage in increasingly faster yet controlled movements. The name of this piece,…
Melbourne’s trams are brightening up your everyday commute, with the first art tram hitting the tracks as part of the Melbourne Festival and Art Trams initiative. Eight trams are hitting the city’s tracks until April next year offering Melbournians a creative contemporary art experience. The first Melbourne Art Tram for 2017 has hit the tracks…
Liveworks, the celebration of performance and cross-disciplinary art, is returning to Carriageworks this month with its most exciting program yet. From 19 to 29 October 2017, a mix of leading Australian and international artists will showcase their works exploring gender, the environment, queer and trans identities, sexuality, race, politics, Indigenous memory and land rights, and the…
It’s astonishing to think about how much music has filled our ears and hearts over the years; and I don’t just mean the years we’ve been alive. I’m talking from day one, when Earth was created. Think about the genre discoveries, the melodies, the development of instruments, idols both past and present. Imagine, what it…
Oftentimes, a contemporary theatrical work can leave a strong impression on an audience, but none more so than the modern-day adaptation of Federico García Lorca‘s YERMA. Directed and re-written by Australian Simon Stone is a radical production of this intense Lorca masterpiece. Starring Billie Piper in her Olivier Award-winning role, and joined by acclaimed Australian actor Brendan Cowell sees the…
Dare to enter the dark and magical world of a 19th century circus as The Carnival of Lost Souls tours through Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane this October/November, leaving a dizzying path of mystery and mayhem for audiences along the way. Nestled somewhere between the madness of a Tim Burton psychosis and the darkness of…
Famed American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is the focus of Alicia Inez Guzmán’s latest work, Georgia O’Keeffe At Home. Exploring the relationship between O’Keeffe’s location and the work she produced, Guzmán takes readers from Texas, to New York, to New Mexico, in a book that is part beautiful coffee table literature, part in depth art historical…
“Culture does not make people. People make culture. If it is true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we can and must make it our culture.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Ms Adichie is just one fierce wordsmith quoted during tonight’s performance by Hot Brown Honey‘s Busty Beatz; setting the tone and ramming it home…
A book like Your Brain Knows More Than You Think is one that challenges you to leave your assumptions at the door. Originally written by psychologist and neurobiologist Niels Birbaumer, and translated into English by David Shaw, it provides some compelling arguments and case studies from the research and practice undertaken by Birbaumer, and others in this…
Author Emma Viskic is an award-winning Australian crime writer, her critically acclaimed debut novel Resurrection Bay won the 2016 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, as well as many other awards. Not only that but she’s also a classically trained clarinettist, who’s worked with Jose Carreras and Dame Kiri Te Kenawa. Her new novel, And…
When strangers meet, they unconsciously do a “dance”, a subliminal meeting of minds using body language. Darlane Litaay and Tian Rotteveel explore this idea in their dance piece Specific Places Need Specific Dances, which this week is part of the OzAsia Festival in Adelaide. Indonesian native Litaay met Dutch / German Rottveel in Papua New…
A show title can make or break the moment a viewer picks your show in an epic Fringe line-up. Well, Appropriate Kissing for All Occasions certainly caught my attention and it was everything I wanted and expected. The 60-minute work is broken up into two 30-minute short pieces, with the second titled to heat you up and cool you…
The Rob Guest Endowment held auditions in Melbourne and Sydney earlier this month, in search of this year’s winner of the Rob Guest Endowment Award. Now in its 9th year, the award is given annually to an emerging musical theatre performer selected by a panel of industry experts. The panel seek out Australia’s most talented young…
Making its world premiere at Brisbane Festival, FUN HOUSE is a vibrant mix of circus acts, dance, and vaudevillian comedy, helmed by a unicorn and a bunny – who else?! It’s been (perhaps a little awkwardly) marketed as an all ages show, presented as a family friendly sister act to Strut & Fret’s other Brisbane…
Touching down on the Alice Springs tarmac I know I’m in a special part of Australia. A town of over 25,000 people, the second largest town after Darwin in the Northern Territory and one largely influenced by its Indigenous culture. Straddling the usually dry Todd River and the Eastern and Western MacDonell Ranges, the town…
Make Nice launched in 2016 and was born from the desire to push back against the “boys club” which exists within creative industries (most industries, let’s be honest) and show creative women they don’t have to be competitive to get ahead. Women can “make nice” and still be successful. In fact, when creative women join…
Michael Ralph is one of Australia’s leading choreographers, always striving to create work that is ground-breaking, fresh and relevant. As part of this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival, Ralph has gifted audiences with a 60-minute dance piece that explores every facet of an artist’s psyche. It is appropriately titled SELF, and stars none other than musical theatre heart-throb,…
If you enjoyed Jersey Boys then you’re sure to love the latest jukebox musical to hit Aussie shores: Beautiful – The Carole King Musical. Starring the sublime Esther Hannaford and featuring an incredible collection of hits, Beautiful is slickly produced and expertly performed. It’s a guaranteed good night out for all. Billed as a musical…
Learn how to play the fascinating, awe-inspiring taiko! Play Taiko will leave you with a unique group experience that will energise, stimulate and excite. Taiko playing requires great energy and teamwork, as well as total integration of one’s mind, body and spirit; the rhythm of the taiko pulsates through your body – its expression is…
Until the Lions is derived from a tale in the Mahabharata about Amba and Shikhandi. Director Akram Khan has a long history with the Mahabhrata, having performed in Peter Brook’s version in 2005. In this dance piece, Khan brings to life the story of Amba, who on her wedding day is abducted by Bheeshma as…
Sondheim, as always, has to make things difficult. If it’s not in his chords then it’s the subject matter of his musicals. However Assassins, one of the more rarely performed of the Sondheim repertoire, finds itself locked and loaded in good hands with Dean Bryant at this latest production at the Hayes. Superb casting all…
I Just Came To Say Goodbye is more than a farewell to bad relationships, bad childhoods and bad dreams. It’s a stupendous sound off of every emotion you’ve spent, every moment you’d traded off and every secret you’ve denied. Worth the lining up, and the extra red from the La Boite’s house bar, the cacophony…
