It is a play unlike any other. In fact, it is a 50-minute interrogation. There is tension in the air and we – the audience – are flies on the wall … listening in and watching intently. Murder is afoot and a woman known to police, Dolly (Kellie Tori), is being grilled by Detective Rowlinson…
Straight from the West End, the new, reimagined production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat is a delightful, fun, engaging and dynamic family musical. Wonderfully directed by Laurence Connor, it is based on the biblical character Joseph. Seen as his father Jacob’s favourite son, he is gifted a beautiful technicolor coat by his dad. That enrages his…
He calls Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre his second home and why wouldn’t he because audiences love him here every time he tours. Put simply, David Strassman is in a stratosphere all his own when it comes to ventriloquism. In his hands and with his vocalisation, his puppets come to life. They are naïve, antagonistic, impudent and oh so…
Respectful, determined and humble. That is the picture that emerges of Australian tennis great Evonne Goolagong Cawley in Sunshine Super Girl, a moniker given to her by the British press. Goolagong picked up a tennis racquet at an early age and immediately showed impressive hand/eye coordination. She grew up without the home comforts many of us took…
A searing feminist work about a woman far ahead of her time, British playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm was inspired by the life of 16th and 17th century poet Emilia Bassano. Feisty and fiery, Emilia stood up for women’s rights and couldn’t see why they should subjugate themselves to men. By various accounts, she was Shakespeare’s muse and…
It is Melbourne 1991. Recession grips the country. A couple of outcasts are in love but out of work. They are going nowhere and make do by robbing small retail outlets, stabbing some victims and causing mayhem. Emma (Veronica Thomas) is the talker, someone who would like Jay (Matthew Connell) to express himself more. The pair drinks too…
The rough lot of an impoverished farming clan is front and centre in Gundog, a dramatic and confronting play with lashes of humour. Although written by Simon Longman from the West Midlands and set on a remote, rundown property in the UK, it fits comfortably into the Australian milieu. The introduction makes quite the impression, courtesy…
A New Zealand fundamentalist church is under the spotlight in Gloriavale. The Christian community, located at Haupiri, north-west of Christchurch, is home to about 600 people from 70 families. Neville Cooper, who changed his name to Hopeful Christian, founded it in 1969. It stands accused of using slave labour and exploiting women and children. The…
For those – like me – who haven’t seen the popular Netflix series on which Stranger Sings! is based, Stranger Things is hugely successful. Set in the 1980s, primarily in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, it is an American science fiction horror drama featuring, among others, Winona Ryder. It centres on mysteries and supernatural events…
Enthusiasm, expectation and excitement in the first half give way to drama and raw emotion in the second act in Titanic The Musical In Concert. 1,517 people, more than two thirds of those that boarded the world’s largest moving object, died after the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg at 11:40pm on 14th April, 1912 and…
