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…
Elvis lives. I dare say many the world over would hope that isn’t just a throwaway line, rather a reality. The truth is the legend of Elvis does live on. Not for naught is he still referred to as The King. Elvis: A Musical Revolution explores the life and times of one of the world’s truly great…
Subterfuge and skullduggery abound, with the Russians and the Allies at loggerheads during the Cold War in Chess: The Musical. The maneuvering is intense, the stakes are high at the World Chess Championships. With music by Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA, and book and lyrics from Tim Rice, CLOC has put on a tremendous production. The…
Sex, crime and bad behaviour characterise the ’60s dark period drama romance Roaring, the debut work for writer and director Staz Barres. Vera (Jackie von Lierop) desperately wants to make it in show business. She seeks fame. As it is, she works in a dead-end job as a waitress, alongside her friend Jane (Daisy Paxton-White). The pair…
Featuring 22 tracks from ABBA, Mamma Mia! The Musical is bright, breezy, energetic and heaps of good-natured fun. Whenever it returns, it always goes down a treat and I never tire of seeing it. The show premiered in Oz on the 9th June 2001 and played for four years to more than 2.2 million people in eight…
Just why Deborah Conway and her husband Willy Zygier are cherished as Australian music royalty is evident when you see Songs from the Book of Life. It is an 80-minute narrative concert featuring a cavalcade of life experiences, as outlined by Conway, along with eight songs. She goes back to her childhood when her parents used…
Their father was big and strong. He could be fun, but more often than not he was scary, angry, brutal and dogmatic. He couldn’t land a job and so money was always tight. He drank. After surviving WWII, which included being shipwrecked and a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway, he had PTSD. His wife,…
Bananaland opens in the wake of Covid’s decimation of the performing arts sector. Only the determined can survive, and lead singer of Kitty Litter, 21-year-old Ruby Semblance (Maz McKenna) is certainly determined… uncompromising in her pursuit to have society wake up and also realise her unconventional onstage artistry. It’s all quite tongue-in-cheek as along with…
Justin Williams makes the impossible possible with a big smile on his face. He is an illusionist and balloon artist who recently won the Australian reality TV series Blow Up. That saw 10 people competing to create the best balloon artworks. He has parlayed that success into the world premiere of Justin’s BIG Balloon Show, in which he…
Stunning. That word best sums up The Australian Ballet’s reinvention of Anne Woolliams’ acclaimed 1977 production of the world’s most famous ballet, Swan Lake. The tragically beautiful story with instantly recognisable score remains an audience favourite and the centrepiece and shining light of many companies’ repertoire. Swan Lake is magnificent, majestic and mesmerising. Dancer, ballet mistress, teacher,…
