Theatre

An 80s-lover’s neon-filled fantasy, come to life! After selling out performances across Broadway and the UK, The Wedding Singer brings its neon lights, flashy perms and dazzling choreography to Melbourne – filling the Athenaeum Theatre with a sense of resounding joy and classic 80s nostalgia. Based on the beloved Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore romantic comedy, The…

You could be forgiven for having never heard of a French sculptor named Camille Claudel. Like many talented and brilliant women history forgot, she existed in the shadow of a man and within the confines of a society that feared the ambitions of women. Growing up with a father who encouraged her and a mother…

Written by David Henry Hwang, Yellow Face at Kings Cross Theatre is a semi-autobiographical play that features the playwright himself as the protagonist. Set in America over the course of the 1990s, Yellow Face focuses particularly on the inception, creation, release and subsequent failure of Hwang’s 1993 play Face Value, and everything that follows. When…

Sydney will be treated to an enchanted fairy-tale in the form of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The Capitol Theatre will host the Australian premiere of a production presented by Opera Australia and the Gordon Frost Organisation, who previously partnered together for The King and I. Debuting in on Broadway in 2013, the award-winning Cinderella is…

Queensland’s oldest standing theatre, The Princess, is set for a new lease of life as the team behind Fortitude Valley’s The Tivoli announce the purchase of the Woolloongabba venue. The Tivoli’s owners, brothers Steve and Dave Sleswick, alongside prominent Brisbane businessman Steve Wilson, recently revealed their plans for revitalising the 133 year old Princess, aiming…

Jackie French’s much loved children’s book, Pete The Sheep has been a staple of households since its first pressing in 2004, with the story of a loveable shearer and his ‘sheep sheep’ Pete teaching children about differing viewpoints and acceptance of change. Theatre company Monkey Baa have lovingly produced a stage musical based on the story,…

Staging an Australian production of a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical is always a daunting task, particularly when that show is one of the most acclaimed and successful musicals in Broadway history. The one benefit for local productions is knowing the audience likely have little first-hand experience with the version seen on The Great White Way….

Trigger warning: review contains references to mental illness and trauma. Sally Sara is a Walkley award-winning journalist, writer and author who has reported from more than 40 countries as a foreign correspondent with the ABC. Her debut play Stop Girl at Belvoir in Sydney is a powerful and compelling story of a woman’s struggle with…

Ever notice how families will remember events from their childhood differently? How a conversation, a situation or a person that seems so clear to you can be viewed from a completely different perspective by your sibling. This concept of selective memory is sometimes heightened after someone dies, our brains often choosing to focus on the…

Sydney Opera House will present two free livestreams of The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Dream this week, a reimagined live performance based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Using gaming and motion-capture technology, Dream will conjure the ethereal surrounds of the forest of sprites and fairies, with narration of the forest by Australia’s very own, Nick…

Think now that summer is over Sydney goes into hibernation? Think again. With the exception of last year, moving into autumn is often a time when the city’s dynamic cultural scene comes alive, and 2021 will be no exception, with some of the best things to do in Sydney. Particularly after the year that was,…

The average Australian spends close to 40% of their waking hours on the internet. That’s over 6 hours a day scrolling, liking, searching and connecting to other people. But what happens when your screen time begins to take up all your time. What happens when the connections you make online become more real than the…

DIRT is the story of an Australian tourist, played by Will King, travelling in Moscow who hooks up with the local tour guide (Patrick Livesey). The romantic interplay between the two evolves over the course of the performance, but each has a hidden story that gradually unfolds. The play is set in contemporary Russia and…

With everything that occurred in the year that was 2020, Appropriate, directed by Wesley Enoch seems, well, appropriate. Written by the American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, the play centres around a dysfunctional American family brought together by the death of their father. As they begin to sort through his belongings they struggle between a desire to…

Theatre was briefly back in Melbourne before another five day lockdown saw shows rescheduled. Before the enforced hiatus, I was fortunate enough to catch a performance of The Gang of Five at La Mama Mobile Theatre. The Gang of Five opened to a full house, based at Creative Spaces’ Studio 1. Repurposing a dance studio…

Melbourne’s theatre scene is back! If you’ve missed the feeling of sitting in one of Melbourne’s lavish theatres, enjoying snacks and a drink from the bar while enjoying a show to remember, get excited because there’s a stellar lineup of shows ready to blow you away. From the Comedy Theatre to Her Majesty’s, Melbourne’s best…

Being a teenage girl is rough. Expectations are high, bodies are changing, social media is all consuming and society deems your interests as silly. There have been countless attempts to represent teen girl culture both on stage and screen, yet most rarely seem to get it right. Originally premiering in 2019, Fangirls attracted a buzz…

It is with no small amount of amusement that I tell you, Magic Mike Live has been one of the most difficult reviews I’ve ever had to write. It would be easy for me to sit here and wax lyrical about how attractive the dancers were (because they were) or how much the crowd of…

Sybylla Melvyn announces (triumphantly and somewhat without apology) that this is a play all about herself. Stuck on her family property as the eldest of eight, her drunken father (Jason Chong) has squandered much of the family resources while her mother (Blazey Best), keen to marry her off, is worried she’s too plain. In strong…

Love it or loath it, you cannot deny Disney’s 2013 animated musical Frozen is one of the biggest pop culture phenomenons of our time. With box office figures, soundtrack sales, and merchandise revenue not seen since the Disney Renaissance of the early 1990s, Frozen was the cultural sensation the House of Mouse had been chasing…

Pippin is the first major musical to return to Sydney theatres, with distancing restrictions easing just before the show’s opening. The show’s offering of colour and magic are perfect medicine for our current climate. But, on another hand, its somewhat confusing premise and over-reliance on smoke and mirrors are yet another symptom of them. This…

There’s a strange level of satisfaction reviewing a new album for such a universally loved band like Ball Park Music. It’s like listening to the news that your best friends are getting married, that you’re going to become a parent for the first time or that the coronavirus has been eradicated. It’s pure, unadulterated excitement,…

February saw Dutch contemporary classical composer Michel van der Aa release his debut indie-pop album. Time Falling saw the composer collaborating with the ever talented and versatile Australian singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke. Today we’re incredibly excited to bring you the exclusive premiere of the music video for album track “What A Dream”.  Time Falling is billed…

From the moment he swaggers into the room, you can tell Tyler Everett (played by Tom Crotty) is going to own the audience. Making eye contact, he begins his story of sex, violence and city living. Dressed in a black leather jacket, white t-shirt and designer stubble, with a backpack slung over his shoulder he…

February 2020 marks the one year anniversary of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child reaching Melbourne. With over 325,000 attendees surging into the Princess Theatre to watch the tale unfold across the last twelve months, the show has been a record-breaking success. Although it has been on stage since its London premiere for almost four years,…

Rip, Drag and Ruminate is a collection of short works from the Adelaide College of the Arts 3rd Year Dancers. Six pieces were presented. The opening sequence by Isobel Stolinski, “To Whom it May Concern”, dealt with art censorship and scrutiny. The Acid Arab soundtrack helped to create an uplifting message which contrasted with the…

Billy Elliot was a hard-hitting film that intertwined the beauty of dance with sentiments of toxic masculinity, as well as giving us an intense glimpse into the class struggles working-class England faced in the early 1980s. Not your obvious choice of musical magic; however, Elton John was so moved after seeing the film at Cannes…

  Grace O’Malley (Gráinne Mhaol), was a powerful seafaring chieftain in 16th-century Ireland who commanded 200 men at sea, and met with Queen Elizabeth I. Curiously, she is not readily found in history books, so Jennifer Liston has bought her story to life, using original poems, songs and music. The upstairs room in the Gilbert…

The year was 1977. The legend Jim Steinman wrote (along with Todd Rundgren) what would become the biggest debut album of all time. That album is called Bat Out Of Hell. Singer of Bat out of Hell, Meatloaf, became a sensation with his range of powerhouse vocals often coupled with female singers with such pizzazz…

Calling all magical fairytale creatures, pack your bags, vacate the swamp, and fly on down to Her Majesty’s Theatre to see everyone’s favourite green ogre belting out a tune in Shrek The Musical! When I first heard that they were turning Shrek, arguably one of the greatest animated cartoon’s of all time into a musical,…