Australia’s most prolific playwright has come out of retirement and has his finger on the pulse, addressing the cost-of-living crisis. The title of his play refers to the haves and have nots in society. When David Williamson was a boy in the 1950s, the difference in salary between a worker and a managing director rarely exceeded fivefold. Now…
It is 1999 and the clock is ticking down to the opening of a new production for a community theatre company. The pompous, misogynistic director fawns over the only paid member of the troupe, the leading man … and derides everyone else. The leading lady longs for a different role. An understudy who sees the good in everyone…
An immigrant family business that grew and grew to become the fourth largest investment bank in the United States before it disintegrated. That is the story of the Lehman Brothers, as told with remarkable insight and stagecraft in The Lehman Trilogy. Born on September 29th, 1822, Hayum Lehmann, the son of a cattle merchant, emigrated from…
The Australian Ballet’s glorious production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a fitting tribute to the splendid State Theatre before it undergoes a three-year refurbishment. It is a colourful, highly creative, whimsical work – a sensory sensation. The winner of the 2018 Helpmann Award for Best Ballet, Christopher Wheeldon choreographs the translation of Lewis Carroll’s beloved book. The…
PIP Theatre’s first offering for 2024 is the hilarious Banging Denmark, written by Van Badham and directed by Heidi Gledhill. Badham wrote the play as a way to cope with the horrendous online trolling she faced as a journalist for The Guardian. Banging Denmark was shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Nick Enright…
A bravura showing from Andre De Vanny distinguishes the incendiary play Swansong by Conor McDermottroe. Set in the 1960s and ‘70s, it focuses on the thoughts and actions of a man whose head isn’t quite right. He attributes that to an incident during his childhood, the result of bullying. Austin ‘Occi’ Byrne (Andre De Vanny) is the…
Chaos and trauma are at play in Every Lovely Terrible Thing. A highly dysfunctional family implodes and picks apart its innards. They are the Colemans who live a rundown weatherboard house on the outskirts of a country town. Cooper, the unemployed, gay, clothing designer grandson in his early 20s, likes dressing in women’s attire and flouncing about. He…
An adaptation of acclaimed film director Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 movie The 39 Steps, Hearth Theatre’s production of the parody is riotously funny. Patrick Barlow’s work from the 1915 novel by Scottish author John Buchan, brings slapstick humour to the mystery crime thriller … and it works b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y. Single, handsome, 6 foot 1, 37-year-old Richard Hannay (Sorab…
We’re in the 19th century. Trusting Bella Manningham is fragile. Not long married, she met her now husband Jack in Switzerland and they connected instantly. They moved into an old house – complete with dark, wood panelled walls – in London, but this is a home with a nefarious history. Its previous owner was murdered in a…
The prequel to The Wizard of Oz is back to delight anew and delight it most certainly does in a dazzling display at Melbourne’s finest theatre – the grand Regent. This is top shelf entertainment in every way. I speak of the talent, the choreography, the staging, the lighting and the sound. We are in the…
