Noni Hazlehurst delivers an inspired performance in the slice of life piece Mother. Homeless and shoeless, she plays the character Christie. Christie married Lenny (who we don’t meet) because both were lonely. They had a baby, but Lenny is critical of Christie because she drinks – a lot and frequently. Christie channels their conversations. There…
Competition can be invigorating, but also dramatic and soul destroying. That is the theme of the two parter created under the auspices of Theatre Works’ Early Career Artists’ Program. As you enter the theatre for Part I, named The Volition Project, you are handed several tokens by one of the actors. On those tokens are…
Life in all its messiness is played out in Lyric Opera’s chamber opera The Children’s Bach. With music by Andrew Schultz and libretto by Glenn Perry, it is based on a novella of the same name by Helen Garner. Set primarily in Melbourne in the 1990s, it centres on the fraught relationships in the Fox…
This captivating production of Puccini’s popular classic leaves an enduring memory for the rusted-on opera fanatic and the novice first-time visitor alike. For this is a ‘roadshow’ version. A touring production with an outstanding cast and with creative qualities second to none. Opera Australia is taking its product to the people. An eight-week extensive circuit…
Acclaimed actor Bert LaBonté makes his directorial debut with the Pulitzer Prize winning comedic drama Topdog/Underdog. It is a two-hander, involving African-American brothers. Lincoln (Damon Manns) has (temporarily) moved into his younger brother Booth’s (Ras-Samuel) small, rented apartment, which has no toilet or running water. That follows Link’s break up with his wife, Cookie (who…
There is one way to compromise a dramatic tale of obsession gone horribly askew that features impressive staging. Get the sound mix wrong. Unfortunately, that was the case at the premiere of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The music totally overwhelmed the opening number and did so again during parts of Act II. So much so that…
An esoteric work for selective tastes, as far as I could make out An Organised Odyssey is about finding one’s true voice. According to Greek mythology, Scylla is a legendary, man-eating monster. She lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart, sea-swallowing monster Charybdis. Ancient Greek poet Homer described Scylla…
Writer Benjamin Nichol continues his incendiary anthology series of plays with the double bill Milk and Blood. Each 70 minutes in duration, they concern the trials and tribulations of a single mother and a gay escort. Both are hard hitting and powerful monologues, presenting snippets of the lives of characters simply called Mummy (in Milk)…
If I reference the word “suffragette”, the first name that will pop into many people’s heads will be Emmeline Pankurst (1858 – 1928). In 1903, she was a founding member of the Women’s Social and Political Union in the UK, which adopted the motto “deeds, not words”. Another associated with the movement was Sarah Jane…
One of the cleverest and funniest pieces of musical theatre I have had the good fortune to see, Murder for Two is a triumph of writing, performance and direction. It is an outrageous murder mystery, a comedic whodunit, with two actors filling 13 roles … and 12 those going to one of them. Mayhem, mirth…
