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…
With clam-shell surrounded footlights bordering its stage within a stage, Bernhardt/Hamlet immediately urges its audience to step back to the world of 19th century Parisian theatre. Theresa Rebeck’s backstage comedy, which is loosely based on reality, follows the life of its titular heroine Sarah Bernhardt (Angie Milliken), now in her mid-50s. She upends the status-quo…
Based on the original 1980 film of the same name starring Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, 9 to 5 The Musical is a workplace revenge comedy that follows the story of three women, each subjected to sexual discrimination and inequality in the workplace. Their takedown of male chauvinism appropriately begins, via pre-recorded video…
With a band dressed in tropical holiday garb, behind a XXXX-can perimeter, Brisbane Powerhouse’s Underground Theatre has an immediately relaxed feel. It’s time to pack a rashie and some Reef coconut oil to head off from Brissie to Bali as, after a sell-out season at the 2021 Sydney Comedy Festival, the smash-hit Schapelle, Schapelle –…
Based on the 1988 film, Heathers: The Musical is a slick show about dark issues, including bullying, teen suicide, sexual assault and school violence. What makes this realisation of the rock musical such a success is the way that it leans into the irony built into Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy’s book. It does not shy from the…
Award-winning British playwright Jasmine Lee-Jones’ provocatively-titled Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner appropriately begins in iPhone lighting. Newly-single student Cleo (Moreblessing Maturure) is lying in bed scrolling through Twitter when she comes across Forbes Magazine’s problematic AF celebration of Kylie Jenner as a ‘self-made billionaire”. Under the username @incognegro, she sets about getting Jenner cancelled…
Musical Theatre Australia’s award-winning A Girl’s Guide to World War tells the true story of some amazing women forgotten by our history. If its premise is not made clear by this hint as to its content, its sentiment comes through strongly during the first scene, which sees its narrator (Vix Sheather, lead singer and guitarist…
Adapting work from screen to stage can be tricky, even more so when it is a beloved animated feature. Thankfully, the hit family-friendly Broadway musical Frozen rises to this challenge, with lavish production design, stunning costumes and impressive special effects to astound as much as entertain. The musical, adapted from the Disney film and Hans…
‘tis the season for Christmas parties and Nakatomi’s is set to be a cracker, hosted as it is by Act React in the return season of the company’s site-specific Die Hard: The Movie, The Play. The Brisbane Powerhouse’s Turbine Platform has been transformed into the Nakatomi Plaza of the 1988 action film favourite’s Los Angeles…
