As I see it, Single Ladies is a variant of a shaggy dog story … in more ways than one. This world premiere production marks the return in this COVID-19 era of Red Stitch Theatre. Set in the inner city Melbourne suburb of Collingwood, three disparate women with issues connect over a missing pooch. Lilike (Caroline Lee)…
Wrong Turn amps up the consequences of taking, well, a wrong turn. The horror thriller keeps on coming at you even after the final credits start rolling, so don’t walk out too soon. Three young professional couples decide to take a hike in the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia. When they arrive in a backwater…
Irish lyricism, bluster and blarney combine in Wild Mountain Thyme. This romantic drama has the sole purpose of joining a lovelorn woman and her timid neighbour. Rosemary Muldoon (Emily Blunt) grew up initially doubting her purpose until her father told her she was the white swan, like in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake (which is a recurring…
In Sean Durkin’s The Nest, a house of cards is waiting to come tumbling down. We’re in Ronald Reagan’s America – specifically 1986. British-born stock trader Rory O’Hara (Jude Law) is having a hard time of it. On the surface all appears peachy. He’s married to an American horse riding instructor, Allison (Carrie Coon). Rory…
Earwig and the Witch continues Studio Ghibli’s well-deserved reputation for excellence for its vivid and creative animated features. Dumped at a country orphanage as a baby, Earwig (the voice of Taylor Henderson) is the child of an English rocker with flaming red hair, who also happens to be a witch. That witch claims she’s being…
A cheeky gangster flick with attitude, Pixie is a bloody delight … and I do mean that literally. As the body count mounts, the star of the show, Pixie O’Brien (Olivia Cooke), bats her eyelids and schemes away. Pixie is the adopted daughter of a gangster who fell out with a bunch of gun-toting priests,…
The gritty and unrelenting Rosie is an affecting slice of life drama dealing with homelessness. With a severe shortage of rental properties and rising rents in Ireland, Rosie Davis (Sarah Greene) and her family have been left homeless and struggling. That happened after their landlord of seven years decided to sell the house they were…
How often do you hear about a good girl being attracted to a bad boy? So frequently, that it has all but become a truism. And that is the case in Lanford Wilson’s (who won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama) Burn This, which opened off Broadway in 1987. Set in the summer of 1983 against the…
Magnificent. Unquestionably, one of the most memorable shows you will ever see. Come From Away has retained all the humour, warmth and poignancy from when it first exploded onto the stage at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre in the middle of 2019. It has lost none of its ability to captivate an audience and hold each member spellbound. You laugh,…
A story of aspiration and achievement, the documentary Dawn Raid is a ripper. Dawn Raid Entertainment became an institution in New Zealand in the late ‘90s and noughties. Co-founded by a couple of young big guys from South Auckland who met at business school – but only completed about a year – and didn’t have…
