There is something wicked and subversive about storybook villains rising and trying to rewrite their fate. That’s the premise of the world premiere musical Villainy. Druzilla (Olivia Charalambous), one of Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters, who bemoans the fact that she is always walked over, is hosting a party. Mind you, the atmosphere is hardly festive. In the house are several…
Adapted from Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography, first published in October 1928, Orlando: A New Musical charts the path of the eponymous hero. After being a handsome teenage boy, the aristocratic Orlando undergoes a sex change and lives on for more than 300 years. The musical is about their life and times. All five performers in it…
Cameron Mackintosh’s spectacular new production of Miss Saigon has stormed onto the Her Majesty’s Theatre stage, captivating an enthusiastic audience anew. It last played at the same theatre 16 years ago. Miss Saigon is a deeply emotional work, featuring soaring vocals and exemplary production values – sound, lighting, choreography and visual effects. Based on Giacomo Puccini’s 1904…
Women treated shamefully by the Aussie Rules’ boys’ club. That is the theme of Patricia Cornelius’ gritty, feminist play In the Club. It concerns three young women who hook up with members of a football team and pay the price. Annie (Eva Seymour) transitions from a naïve, football-mad 15-year-old to an exploited 16-year-old, which sets the tone…
Inspired by the 2009 Dutch horror film The Human Centipede, Synergy Production Co. has given us a musical parody featuring the same characters. Like the movie, it concerns a deranged German surgeon – Dr Heiter – who kidnaps three tourists and conjoins them surgically, mouth to anus … I kid you not. Dr Heiter is renowned for…
Eighteen dynamos of dance and drums dazzle and delight at Arts Centre Melbourne. They are truly mesmerising in an energetic display of artistic brilliance. Let me set the scene. The curtain goes up to reveal two tiers. At ground level are nine dancers seated, ostensibly dressed in white with black highlights and taupe-coloured socks. Behind them, on a higher plane,…
The turbulent life of jazz singer Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan) is on show in an intimate club setting in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. Holiday (7th April, 1915 – 17th July,1959) was nicknamed Lady Day by her friend, saxophonist Lester Young. Among her musical influences were Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Being an African…
Talk about playing mind games with words. Seventeen years after MTC staged this Tony Award winning musical comedy, Saltpillar Theatre has brought it back to tickle our funny bones again. It is, indeed, hilarious, more than a touch silly and really fun, but not without pathos. All the young contestants in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling…
Sensual and alluring, Matador combines scantily clad performers with pulsating English and Spanish beats, and acrobatic acts in a fast-moving show. It is a fusion of dance, circus and burlesque, a modern celebration of forbidden love, carnal desires, passion and pain in its many coloured hues. At its core is acceptance of diversity. Eleven performers cavort, clamber…
Hardly a conventional musical, The Tony Award-winning Songs for a New World* is thematic. It doesn’t follow a linear narrative. Dating from 1995, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, it is about life changing moments and navigating uncertainty. The cast represents passengers on a crowded ship en route to a new land. Traditionally, the show is…
