Contemporary horror/fantasy author Clive Barker’s The History of the Devil focuses on the greatest trial in history. A deprived and lovelorn Satan is tired of living in hell and wants to go back to Heaven, but first he must undergo a trial for his time on Earth. Ambitious lawyers for the prosecution Tiana Varcoe (Lisa…
Social media is a language. Those you speak it will appreciate the authenticity of the early scenes of Lewis Treston’s IRL, which sees 17-year-old Alexei (Will Bartolo), back and forthing in messenger conversation with his closeted internet crush Thaddeus (Byron Lankester Howells), complete with the awkwardness and overthinking insecurity the manifests itself in any such…
Shake & Stir’s adaption of Mary Shelly’s classic gothic horror novel Frankenstein is thrilling in both pace and spectacle. From its beginning, the company leans into the scale and theatrical potential of the epic story of young scientist Victor Frankenstein’s creation of a sentient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. The colossal storytelling starts aboard…
When depressed, we are urged to remember that things get better for there are many brilliant things about the world… at least a million according to our unnamed narrator’s hopeful list. It his list of these that is the central premise of Every Brilliant Thing … a list of everything worth living for, first compiled…
Bananaland opens in the wake of Covid’s decimation of the performing arts sector. Only the determined can survive, and lead singer of Kitty Litter, 21-year-old Ruby Semblance (Maz McKenna) is certainly determined… uncompromising in her pursuit to have society wake up and also realise her unconventional onstage artistry. It’s all quite tongue-in-cheek as along with…
What is your anthem? It’s an early question that not only leaves audience members pondering, but sums up the central premise of Shake and Stir’s uplifting new work, Tae Tae in the Land of Yaaas!, appearing as part of Brisbane Festival. More than a favourite tune, a person’s anthem is a theme song declaration of…
The best storytelling comes from showing not telling… that is using action (or lack of, as the case may be) to reveal the emotions intended to be interpreted by the audience. Awareness of this is at the core of Hannah Belanszky’s mainstage debut work Don’t Ask What the Bird Look Like from its very outset…
The seemingly inexplicably-named Capricorn sees its action play out in the metaphoric fishbowl of a couple’s home…. or perhaps it is that we are in the water with them, as is suggested by teal-toned chair covers of audience seating at its world premiere in La Boite’s Roundhouse Theatre. It’s a confusion the perhaps sums up…
David Eldridge’s well-written two-hander Beginning has a runtime of 1 hour 40 minutes, without interval. Yet its story appears to fly by in what seems like the shortest of times, such is its well-written script of witty, but also honest banter of two singles, drawn together at a party’s end. It is in intimate real…
Symbolic contrasts abound within The Curators’ stylish production of Angela Betzien’s Children of the Black Skirt, starting from its initial folly of youthful frolic and then soon-after stark at-attention responses of children in-fear. This establishes both the aesthetic sophistication and the narrative premise of the now-iconic work which is set in an abandoned orphanage that…
