Society has grown up with the expectation that women will get married to men and have children. The men will go to work, while the women will tend to the chores around the home as they care for the kids. It speaks volumes about the heteropatriarchal model on which traditional society has been modelled. But…
I know the 2025 Green Room Awards for the best of the best of Melbourne theatre have just been announced, but here is the early contender to scoop the pool in 2026. The Birds is a blindingly creative immersive experience, which leaves an indelible impression. A brilliant performer in Paula Arundell is on stage on…
A pugilist’s confessional, Shadow Boxing is tough, gritty and unrelenting. Samuel Addison features as the boxer, whose father, Errol Sebastian Flynn (who we never meet), also put on the gloves. His 47 fights produced only eight wins and his son recalls the vitriol directed at his dad as he lay spreadeagled on the canvas with…
So much fun. Eddie is just perfect (bad pun for lead Eddie Perfect) as the smelly old demon Beetlejuice, in the riotous musical of the same name. Beetlejuice is bemoaning the fact that he is invisible and ignored by all unless he can get a living person to say his name three consecutive times. He…
The emotional resonance of Les Misérables is massive in the Melbourne leg of The Arena Spectacular world tour. It is a production full of power, passion, poise and polish. It is a grand spectacle that starts with the anticipation of the audience that fills the vast space of Rod Laver Arena. Even before I enter…
What is real and what is imagined? What if you firmly – hand on heart – believe something to be true and you act accordingly? These are questions dealt with in the ambitious new experience The Door in Question, part of the Sleepless Footscray Festival. It is about identity and psychosis and is the brainchild…
Lovers Orpheus (Noah Mullins) and Eurydice (Eliza Soriano, filling in for regular Abigail Adriano) find out the hard way that if you deal with the devil, there will be hell to pay. In a nutshell, that is the conceit in the cautionary tale Hadestown, a most appealing musical. Orpheus, the son of a muse who…
The past and the present collide in a story that involves reframing a tainted history. We are in Gippsland in the 1840s and a white woman is discovered near death, washed up on a beach. Just what happened to her remains the stuff of myths, but she is said to have been rescued by and…
Personal and societal catastrophic incidents shape a pre-get together, ahead of a 20th anniversary high school reunion in Washington DC in 2022. They form the basis of the conceit, which sees combatants take pot shots at one another in The Comeuppance, which is both dramatic and comedic. Emilio (Khisraw Jones-Shukoor), who used to be a…
The win at all costs mentality that underpins The Beep Test carries with it a high price. This is Year 7C, whose driven PE teacher channels his own unfulfilled ambitions into the captain of the football team, a standout player and reigning beep test champion. I speak of a multi-stage fitness test, in which participants…
