Hijinks abound in the witty, irreverent, farcical hit musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. A world first, all-female identifying cast of 10 give voice to a comedy that has its roots in Roman times. It is feel good material, with plenty of laughs along the way. Pseudolus (Charmaine Gorman) is a wily…
In keeping with the original (2002) and the sequel (2016), My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is very much in feel-good territory. The extended Portokalos family is in fine voice. Everyone is wanting to have their say on a trip to Greece to attend a reunion for the extended family in their father’s home village….
British musician Mike Oldfield was still in his teens when he recorded his first studio album, the iconic number one chart topper Tubular Bells. It was the first release on Richard Branson’s fledgling label Virgin Records and went on to sell tens of millions of copies. Sales surged when Tubular Bells’ opening theme was used in the…
Anthony Lapaglia and Alison Whyte shine in a superb rendition of one of the finest plays of the 20th century, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. It won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in the same year. It is an incendiary look at the American Dream, which relates to…
The genuinely creepy horror-thriller The Nun II harks back to The Nun (2018), in which a demonic sister named Valak ran riot. Well … now she’s back, at her malevolent worst. Valak terrifies adults and children alike. And, again, the Vatican prevails on Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), now entrenched in the work of the church,…
There’s action and humour aplenty in the animated adventure, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. The film tracks how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came to be and how they won favour. Scientist Baxter Stockman’s (the voice of Giancarlo Esposito) lair is raided. He’s killed, but he has already “grown” some terrifying creatures. Among the…
Two, original, 35-minute works broken by a 20-minute interval, the first involves 22 dancers aged 10 to 17 (the youth artists) and the second 15 adults. Youngsters in various formations – all dressed in parallel versions of white and black – run, leap, tumble and turn in Happily Ever After. A series of vignettes, the scenes…
Club Vegas is a fulsome variety show that would be quite at home on casino stages around the world. It combines modern interpretations of hit songs with rolled gold classics and colourful, bejewelled, bedazzling costuming with feathered headdresses to die for. Quite the spectacle. I couldn’t get enough of it. The dancers take to the stage from the…
The Camorra is in the sights of mysterious former government operative Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) in the violent, action-filled The Equalizer 3. The third and final film in the Equalizer trilogy, you can watch this one in isolation and make sense of it even if you haven’t seen the others. It’s directed by Antoine Fuqua,…
Faith is put under the spotlight in Jodi Gallagher’s immersive new work Prophet. Is it the story of Christianity? There are certainly elements of it in there. I am thinking of Jesus and one of his disciplines in particular. This journey started with Gallagher writing about Jewish mystic Sabbatai Zevi and his prophet, theologian Nathan of Gaza. Mind…
