Theatre

The Beast that is Eddie Perfect’s debut play had its premiere at the Sydney Opera House on Friday the 29th of July. The playwright joins the endowed cast of seven on stage, bringing to life a tale of three city-slicking partners and their journey through to the Yarra Valley after three mates and their skipper encounter…

Well. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is not going to be the easiest thing to review. Not only was the play itself a complete sensory overload, its plot was so intricate that I almost feel like I can’t reveal anything without giving the die hard fans a clue as to what happens. Suffice to…

Watching Cinderella – The Pantomime was like stepping into a wonderful world of magic where your inner child could run free. This panto is the third one to be brought to Australia by Bonnie Lythgoe Productions and it looks poised to follow in the success of Snow White and Aladdin. Cinderella was ultimately a light…

Set in a post apocalyptic wasteland in the not-too-distant future, The Big Dry leaves more questions than it attempts to answer. Firstly, it is a commentary on climate change and the dire options it potentially leaves our ancestors, but also is a discussion on the abilities of children if left to inherit the earth before…

A modern day Broadway classic is reimagined by Australia’s rising theatre talent in The Addams Family: A New Musical Comedy, now playing at Theatre Works in St Kilda. It is a perfect venue for the show, small, intimate and filled with dark corners for dark deeds. Telling a simple story set within the walls of…

Disgraced – Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is an enthralling experience for the audience lucky enough to find themselves in the Riverside Theatre of Parramatta. Director Sarah Goodes, along with designer Elizabeth Gadsby, expertly present the play and encapsulate audiences in a 90-minute sensation that stimulates thought, emotions, and further questions the notions of identity and belonging. Amir…

You’ll be guaranteed to be singing the Cold Chisel classic after attending this production, but sadly the theatrical version doesn’t quite rise to the heights of its musical namesake. Written and produced by Aussie dramatist Wayne Tunks, Flame Trees is a story about the unforgiving nature of country towns. Past actions are not easily forgotten, as…

Filmmaker Gerry (Jeremy Waters) wants your children. More specifically, he wants to document the lives of five seven-year-old Australians, filming them for one day each year until they are 21. They are Roger (Jemwel Danao), Jessie (Chenoa Deemal), Susannah (Charlotte Hazzard), Zoe (Jody Kennedy) and Cameron (Taylor Wiese). We watch this unfold across two acts,…

Oscar Wilde’s story of The Happy Prince reads much like a beautiful parable. Perhaps, this is why it seemed only appropriate to host the first ever musical tale of story in a church. Simon Chan, composer and artistic director at The Other Production Company, has translated Wilde’s beautiful story telling into equally beautiful music. Sharing the…

The life and times story of an American woman experimenting with feminism in the 60s, 70s and 80s may not seem like it has much relevance on today’s Sydney stage. But in bringing Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles to life, the team at the New Theatre have successfully highlighted the very long way women still…

Love, Loss, and What I Wore, a play by Nora and Delia Ephron, is based on the 1995 book of the same name by Ilene Beckerman. We are introduced to five women who take it in turns presenting individual, and sometimes joint, monologues. These range from irreverent and funny to painful and heartbreaking, the common…

In February 2008 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd publicly apologised to the Stolen Generations of Indigenous Australian’s. Eight years later on National Sorry Day, May 27th, Hart, a new play from She Said Theatre, celebrated it’s second night of a new season at Perth’s Blue Room Theatre. Hart, written by Ian Michael and Seanna van Helten,…

In a very brief yet consuming experience, much like the turn of many events in our lives, Judith Wright Centre became the space for Andrew Bovell’s When The Rain Stops Falling for the weekend only. THAT Production Company based in Ipswich presented the show and made it through the challenge of capturing the fluidity of…

The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare’s tale of a woman “tamed” by a man, has seen many adaptations over the years, but perhaps none so clever as the latest offering from Sport for Jove. Set in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1920s, a time of strong women – both on the silver…

Melbourne was alive with The Sound of Music on Thursday night as the who’s who of the social elite came out for the opening night. With the thought of Julie Andrews prancing through hills conjuring up beautiful memories in my mind, I sat down delighted to see this long running show. It was a packed…

Theatre lovers prepare yourselves for a truly exquisite piece work from the mastermind that is Tennessee Williams. This autobiographical play is an awakening to the internal struggles that both men and women faced in the early 1940s; a time when women longed to find a man and as well homosexuality being taboo. From the opening monologue…

To shamelessly borrow from a popular nineties sitcom It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear, When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year, (handclaps) So to it is with some of the characters in Maiden Voyage Theatre Company’s Belated. There are breakups, bust ups, bickering, and a tiny…

The Killer Queen (Casey Donovan) is, well, a Killer Queen – but she also likes Fat Bottomed Girls. Is one such girl, in fact. When she’s not indulging, she’s doing what she can to make sure that all the music on the iPlanet is Computer Recorded Autotune Pop (or CRAP). The last thing she wants…

In this period of YouTube celebrities, reality TV starlets and Kardashians, it can be challenging to relate to theatrical characters. Audiences are regularly plated-up a plethora of classics, complete with over-the-top performances and melodious, fruity language contrasted against edgy, overly dark interpretations of long-lost fables. Presented on stark stages that we struggle to comprehend (but…

Before any actor graces the stage, the apartment is full of stories. The cracks on the wall tell us it was built-to-last a long time ago. The beaded curtains in the doorway are permanently drawn to the side; while charming, they quickly became a nuisance. By the red corduroy couch, there’s a pair of boots…

After a successful run at the Brisbane Powerhouse during last year’s Brisbane Festival, raucous disco cabaret VELVET made a triumphant return to the River City, taking over the Cremorne Theatre at QPAC. Once a huge fan of the standard cabaret fare, the borderline offensive humour and the sexy-but-kinda-weird acts offered by shows like Club Swizzle, Absinthe, and La…

Directed by Jennifer Hagan and presented by Strange Duck Productions, Blonde Poison is a gripping tale of betrayal, war and the high price of survival. Based on a true story, Stella Goldschlag is preparing to be interviewed in her home by an old childhood friend, now a successful journalist. As she becomes increasingly anxious about…

It’s hard to be critical of non-professional productions, because they are the training ground for so many working in the industry. Certainly, newcomers should be congratulated for sticking out their proverbial necks and adding to Sydney’s ever-expanding theatrical quilt. But unfortunately, some productions just don’t work, no matter how much effort the creatives put in….

The Mars Project is the new work from writer Will O’Mahony and The Skeletal System, the team behind the acclaimed Great White. The Mars Project tells the story of Wren and Sam, Sister and Brother, detailing their diverging lives, as one tries to reach Mars and one struggles to speak – Sam has autism. The…

The April – July Season at Perth’s Blue Room Theatre kicked off last week with Renegade Productions’ Selkie the new work from writer Finn O’Branagáin, and directed by Joe Lui. Selkie is a contemporary reimagining of the old myth; stripped of the romanticism and whimsy; an exploration of the darker themes at play. I was…

And you thought your family was bad. Meet the Blisses. Mother Judith (Heather Mitchell) is a retired stage actress, her husband David (Tony Llewellyn-Jones) is a novelist and their two grown children, Simon (Tom Conroy) and Sorel (Harriet Dyer) still live at home. Hay Fever opens with the siblings exchanging insults and generally talking around…

On a cold Wednesday night in Melbourne a small selection of ‘in the know’ theatre goers headed down to La Mama Theatre in Carlton, Melbourne for the opening night of esteemed Norwegian play Night Sings Its Songs. Patrons mingled in the outside courtyard, anticipation growing with every passing moment, wondering just what they were in…

The subject of masculinity and what it means to be a man in today’s Australia are skillfully explored in Darlinghurst Theatre Company’s production of Savages, written by Patricia Cornelius. Opening with a blast of light and sound, we meet four thirty-something Aussie men, about to embark on the ‘trip of a lifetime’ aboard a cruise…

As the curtain opens you would be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled into the wrong theatre. On stage we see Sherlock Holmes concluding a murder investigation and catching his killer – but how can that be when we are only three minutes in? Here, at the start of the Pavilion Theatre’s The Game’s Afoot;…

Love will tear us apart. This song lyric by the late Ian Curtis of Joy Division seems an appropriate way to sum up the gothic romance tale, Wuthering Heights. Queensland’s shake & stir theatre co. have produced a rather faithful and intense adaptation of Emily Brontë’s story, but it also manages to add a few…