Reviews

Excellent direction and inspired design make Secret House’s production of Cymbeline a surprisingly entertaining night out. One of Shakespeare’s least-known works, Cymbeline reads like a bingo card of the Bard’s favourite devices: gruesome murder, adventures in the woods, cross-dressing, a confused King, banishment, star-crossed lovers and war. Tick, tick, tick, Bingo! At nearly 4,000 lines,…

Dream Lover – The Bobby Darin Musical is the perfect show for a casino – packed to the brim with classic cabaret and jazz tunes, a live big band and dazzling set and costumes. Add to the mix an engaging story and a first-rate star and you’re guaranteed to have a mainstream hit on your…

Laura Johnston’s one-woman show Hitchcock’s Birds is superbly researched and well performed, but leaves the audience wanting more. The concept behind this show is compelling: an insight into the mind of film director Alfred Hitchcock, delivered from the mouths of his leading ladies. The script is taken entirely from real life interviews with Hitchcock’s actresses,…

A great play and strong visual design set Edgewise Production’s The Women up for success, but inconsistent performances mean it falls just short of its potential. The Women was written in 1936 by Clare Boothe Luce. Described as a comedy of manners, with dialogue purportedly taken from conversations overheard in Manhattan powder rooms, the story…

Talk about a big undertaking! For this year’s Sydney Fringe Festival, Montague Basement has tackled ‘15 books of the finest Latin poetry known to man’, by creating their own adaptation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. What it lacks in finesse, this production certainly makes up for in entertainment value. Tracing the history of the world, from the…

Montague Basement’s Tammy & Kite is something just a little bit special, and a must-see in this year’s Sydney Fringe Festival line-up. This delightful, playful new creation introduces us to sisters Tammy and Kite (and the super-cute Philip the Duck). Through their play, we learn they are best friends, share a love of fart jokes…

If you ever wanted to step back in time to the golden age of Broadway, now’s your chance, because Opera Australia and John Frost’s My Fair Lady is about as close as it comes. This is a nostalgic, faithful and lovingly-recreated production that will have musical theatre fans coming back for more. My Fair Lady…

Andrew Henry gives a tour de force performance in Red Line Productions’ well executed take on the British classic, Look Back in Anger. Henry plays Jimmy Porter, a disillusioned young Englishman living in near-poverty with his wife and their flatmate in a one-bedroom flat in the Midlands. Well-educated but devoutly loyal to his working-class upbringing,…

After the Pythons re-united for a brief run of shows at the O2 in London in 2014, John Cleese and the team behind the show started thinking about what else might work on the stage. Cleese’s brilliant, all-too-short but totally classic series Fawlty Towers seemed to be the obvious choice, and they immediately began to…

Who Am I? Where did I come from? What was my family like? We’re all hit by these questions at some point in our lives, hit with that desire to find out more about those bits of life that have faded into half formed memories. It is this desire to find out more about her…

Samuel Beckett might have brushed up against your memory like a shifty cat quickly grazing past your leg before changing its mind and scampering off into the darkness. Or perhaps you’re very familiar with his work that planted him firmly at the forefront of absurdist theatre when it was at its peak of creation. Regardless…

And just like that, the biggest show to open in Australia this year has blown the socks off audiences. Ever since it was announced to make its Australian debut, the hype surrounding Disney’s classic Aladdin has been immense, with industry professionals and theatre lovers alike counting down the days until opening night. Every childhood memory…

Most people are familiar with the story of On Golden Pond, with many having seen the 1981 film starring Henry and Jane Fonda and Katharine Hepburn. The story centres around relationships and families, in particular the dynamic which exists between Norman Thayer, JR (Dave Kirkman), his wife Ethel (Carole Grace) and his estranged daughter Chelsea…

There’s an overwhelming urge amongst Australian societies to divulge themselves in to the case of missing people – particularly children. Stories that dominate the media also capture us. The case of Daniel Morcombe is a case in point, where the pubic followed it religiously for more than a decade until there was some sort of…

Director Kevin Jackson freely admits Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters is his favourite play of the last century and you can certainly feel the love in Sport For Jove’s production of the classic work, now playing at the Seymour Centre, Chippendale. The three sisters are Olga, Masha and Irina, who we follow over a period of five…

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…