It seems fitting that, whether coincidentally or otherwise, the day after Queensland Theatre welcomed audiences back to previews of Kieran Hurley’s Mouthpiece, the company unveiled plans for the brave new world of theatre in 2021. The program, the first from Artistic Director Lee Lewis is certainly a season for our times, filled with love, laughter,…
Mouthpiece … it is the name of an artwork by Declan Swan (Jayden Popik in an impressive Queensland Theatre debut), but it also has multiple other meanings within Kieran Hurley’s very clever and often ironic award-winning play of the same name. ‘I wanna live like common people, I wanna do whatever common people do’, Pulp’s…
Written by Perth playwright Andrew O’Connell, Professional Premises is a one sitting piece that offers no relief from some very nuanced sparring between three very intense characters. An observational work that relies on what is both being relayed and what is being witnessed by the third character not currently engaged, the focus of the (in…
Vincent River is not a location; it is the name of the character at the centre of Philip Ridley’s powerful 2000 one act play of the same name that addresses homophobic-based violence, which can really be extended to include violence against any form of difference. However, even with this knowledge, Vincent’s character remains elusive as,…
Although billed in some quarters as “Hamilton: The Movie”, the Hamilton now streaming on Disney + is more of a filmed version of the stage production. Director Thomas Kail (Fosse/Verdon) captures a 2016 performance of the groundbreaking musical at the Richard Rodgers Theater in New York. The performance features the original Broadway cast, including Lin…
Not being able to conceive when one is desperate to start a family can cause major rifts in a marriage. Infertility affects about one in six Australian couples of reproductive age. That is the starting point for a world premiere work by Australian playwright Ron Elisha, which originated from a feature article in The Australian Weekend…
What a grand show and a great experience Kurios is. Artistic excellence, ingenuity and reinvention are the keys to the ongoing success of the world’s preeminent circus, Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the Sun). Kurios continues a fine tradition and as the title suggests, it features a cabinet of curiosities – the forerunner to museums containing artefacts…
Noni Hazlehurst is unrecognisable as dishevelled vagrant Christie, wandering about the rubbish that litters the Cremorne Theatre’s ramshackle staging in Mother. Christie is a homeless alcoholic, sorrowful but resolute in her attempts to survive on the suburban fringe of Melbourne. And Hazlehurst inhabits her just as Christie inhabits the littered debris of Kat Chan’s set design….
Promiscuity to hide the pain. That – in a nutshell – is the short life and times of Lolita, as evocatively captured by Patricia Cornelius in Slut. We chart her childhood, mainly through three frenemies (Michaela Bedel, Lauren Mass and Jessica Tanner) – girls who grew up with her, befriended her and then dissed her. They excitedly…
A cleverly conceived and executed piece that purports to be one thing and turns out to be something else entirely, I am loathe to go into detail about the narrative arc for fear of spoiling the surprise. Suffice to say, the story concerns a couple of old mates – a straight girl and a gay…
