The popular Agatha Christie play The Mousetrap has been a constant tourist drawcard in London since it was first performed in 1952, meaning that perhaps the whodunit’s biggest mystery is how the show is not outdated. Australian audiences can determine this for themselves in the latest on-tour production of the West End version of the…
Part of Belloo Creative’s mission is to bring people and stories out of the shadows. Appropriately then, the female-led, award-winning company’s latest production, Boy, Lost covers the true story of one family’s loss and redemption. The years-in-the-making world premiere work has been adapted for the stage by Katherine Lyall-Watson from Kristina Olsson’s award-winning memoir. It…
“Did that just happen?” a mischievous Michael Banks (Fraser Goodreid) wonders to sister Jane (Dorothea Seierup) after their first outing to the park with Mary Poppins sees park statutes come to life. There are lots of similar moments in Disney and Cameron Mackintosh’s new production of Mary Poppins. Cheeky young Michael has some of the…
Othello has long been one of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays, but with its challenges comes great potential. That potential is realised in Queensland Theatre’s production, part of the 2022 Brisbane Festival program. It is an electric adaption that approaches the tragedy from a uniquely-Queensland perspective. Jimi Bani and Jason Klarwein inject Australian and Torres Strait Islander…
Like Sex and the City, Tiddas is a frank and warm look at female friendship. Far from the hustle and bustle of New York City, however, the story is set under the blooming jacarandas of 2022 Brisbane, which makes its world premiere as part of this year’s Brisbane Festival, especially appropriate. The page-to-stage adaptation of…
The Cremorne Theatre stage is packed with nooks and crannies to become the Yeppoon settings of shake and stir theatre company’s latest page-to-stage adaptation, the world premiere of Fourteen (part of this year’s Brisbane Festival). The show is fast moving from the outset, propelled by a dynamic soundscape, which places us firmly into the time…
Eighteen-year-old Anna (Melissa Kahraman) has been on medication for so long she can’t remember who she is without it. Whereas once, as a little girl, she was a prodigious writing talent, able to fill hundreds of notebooks with imaginative stories, now her creativity appears lost to years of pills and prescriptions. She ponders if her…
Opera Australia’s production of Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella is glorious from the get go. Though there is no real standout number, the musical’s soundtrack is glorious and easy-on-the-ear, filled as it is with recognisable Rogers and Hammerstein melodies and lyrics. Anna Louizos’ set design is superb, featuring slick transitions through scenes the sometimes include animal hand…
A pre-show soundtrack featuring “Barbie Girl” and “Ice Ice Baby” immediately acquaints the audience at La Boite Theatre’s re-imagining of Oscar Wilde’s social satire An Ideal Husband. It is set around 1996, in the lead up to the federal election. Arthur “Artie” Whig (Will Carseldine) has been invited to the national capital for his father to…
The Sunshine Club opens in the summer of 1946. Ambitious Aboriginal solider, former boxing champion Frank Doyle (Marcus Corowa) has spent years fighting for freedom shoulder-to-shoulder with troops from all over Australia. Despite its opening number “Lest We Forget”, the war does not set the narrative tone of Queensland Theatre’s bright revival of Wesley Enoch…
