Daniel Defoe (born Daniel Foe) may well have been the first English novelist. At least that is the contention in the play Defoe’s Plague, which starts with a man in a thin, eerie, long nosed mask performing an incense cleansing. The head covering looks like that worn by doctors in bygone days and intended to protect them…
Adapted from Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography, first published in October 1928, Orlando: A New Musical charts the path of the eponymous hero. After being a handsome teenage boy, the aristocratic Orlando undergoes a sex change and lives on for more than 300 years. The musical is about their life and times. All five performers in it…
Cameron Mackintosh’s spectacular new production of Miss Saigon has stormed onto the Her Majesty’s Theatre stage, captivating an enthusiastic audience anew. It last played at the same theatre 16 years ago. Miss Saigon is a deeply emotional work, featuring soaring vocals and exemplary production values – sound, lighting, choreography and visual effects. Based on Giacomo Puccini’s 1904…
Imagine if Shakespeare wrote the cult favourite movie Ghostbusters. Same inherent storyline – fighting poltergeists in New York City – but what would it have sounded and looked like if the dialogue had been written by the Bard? Well, wonder no more, because if you visit The Motley Bauhaus in Carlton you can get to…
Women treated shamefully by the Aussie Rules’ boys’ club. That is the theme of Patricia Cornelius’ gritty, feminist play In the Club. It concerns three young women who hook up with members of a football team and pay the price. Annie (Eva Seymour) transitions from a naïve, football-mad 15-year-old to an exploited 16-year-old, which sets the tone…
Inspired by the 2009 Dutch horror film The Human Centipede, Synergy Production Co. has given us a musical parody featuring the same characters. Like the movie, it concerns a deranged German surgeon – Dr Heiter – who kidnaps three tourists and conjoins them surgically, mouth to anus … I kid you not. Dr Heiter is renowned for…
A Dodgeball Named Desire is a clever, creative and involving hoot, contrasting the literary with the sporting. It is a decidedly fresh take on A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. First performed on Broadway in December 1947, that is the story of former Southern belle Blanche DuBois, whose personal circumstances have changed for the worse. An…
Toys run amok, killing and maiming, in director Emma Tammi’s Five Nights at Freddy’s. Mike (Josh Hutcherson) is a troubled soul. A shopping centre security guard, his massively aggressive treatment of the father of a young son sees him fired and looking for a new job. At that stage, we – the audience – don’t…
Eighteen dynamos of dance and drums dazzle and delight at Arts Centre Melbourne. They are truly mesmerising in an energetic display of artistic brilliance. Let me set the scene. The curtain goes up to reveal two tiers. At ground level are nine dancers seated, ostensibly dressed in white with black highlights and taupe-coloured socks. Behind them, on a higher plane,…
The turbulent life of jazz singer Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan) is on show in an intimate club setting in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. Holiday (7th April, 1915 – 17th July,1959) was nicknamed Lady Day by her friend, saxophonist Lester Young. Among her musical influences were Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Being an African…
