Hadestown (Her Majesty’s Theatre) – musical theatre review
Lovers Orpheus (Noah Mullins) and Eurydice (Eliza Soriano, filling in for regular Abigail Adriano) find…
Les Misérables: The Arena Spectacular (Rod Laver Arena and touring) – musical theatre review
The emotional resonance of Les Misérables is massive in the Melbourne leg of The Arena Spectacular world tour. It is a production full of power, passion, poise and polish. It is a grand spectacle that starts with the anticipation of the audience that fills the vast space of Rod Laver Arena. Even before I enter…
The Door in Question (Metro West Shopping Centre in Footscray and nearby) – theatre review
What is real and what is imagined? What if you firmly – hand on heart – believe something to be true and you act accordingly? These are questions dealt with in the ambitious new experience The Door in Question, part of the Sleepless Footscray Festival. It is about identity and psychosis and is the brainchild…
Hadestown (Her Majesty’s Theatre) – musical theatre review
Lovers Orpheus (Noah Mullins) and Eurydice (Eliza Soriano, filling in for regular Abigail Adriano) find out the hard way that if you deal with the devil, there will be hell to pay. In a nutshell, that is the conceit in the cautionary tale Hadestown, a most appealing musical. Orpheus, the son of a muse who…
The Black Woman of Gippsland (MTC) – theatre review
The past and the present collide in a story that involves reframing a tainted history. We are in Gippsland in the 1840s and a white woman is discovered near death, washed up on a beach. Just what happened to her remains the stuff of myths, but she is said to have been rescued by and…
The Comeuppance (Red Stitch) – theatre review
Personal and societal catastrophic incidents shape a pre-get together, ahead of a 20th anniversary high school reunion in Washington DC in 2022. They form the basis of the conceit, which sees combatants take pot shots at one another in The Comeuppance, which is both dramatic and comedic. Emilio (Khisraw Jones-Shukoor), who used to be a…
The Beep Test (Theatre Works) – musical theatre review
The win at all costs mentality that underpins The Beep Test carries with it a high price. This is Year 7C, whose driven PE teacher channels his own unfulfilled ambitions into the captain of the football team, a standout player and reigning beep test champion. I speak of a multi-stage fitness test, in which participants…
St Kilda Tales: A Performance Rave (Theatre Works’ Explosives Factory) – theatre review
Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. The heartbeat of a suburb is captured in St Kilda Tales. All but two hours of movement and conversation is partly overlaid with music. Ten actors play characters looking for connection, among them friends and the disenfranchised, prostitutes and druggies. On occasion, a single conversation dominates proceedings. At other…
The Lord of the Rings – A Musical Tale (Comedy Theatre) – musical theatre review
Call me a heathen, but I never got into the mythology of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic and beloved trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Mind you, I could say the same about Harry Potter … and then I saw that stage play, firstly in two parts and then in one, which won me over. Now, the…
The Verdi Gala Concert (Opera Australia) – opera review
Who were the big winners from The Verdi Gala Concert at Hamer Hall? We – the audience – as we were left in awe of the raw emotion on display from the moment that conductor supreme Alexander Briger lifted his baton. Orchestra Victoria was in peak form from the opening overture – urgent and powerful….
Songs from the Canyon (Palais Theatre and touring) – concert review
My, couldn’t we do with more peace and love in the world now, arguably more than ever? That is why Songs from the Canyon (that is Laurel Canyon) carries even greater weight in 2025. The geographic reference is to a mountainous neighbourhood in the Hollywood Hills, an oasis of tranquillity and the home of counterculture…
