White privilege receives a pummelling in the satire Admissions. It is 2015 and Sherri Rosen-Mason (Kat Stewart) is head of admissions at an exclusive US high school – Hillcrest in New Hampshire, New England. Over 15 years, Sherri has worked tirelessly to raise the percentage of coloured students at the school. She has succeeded in seeing that proportion…
Pierre Anthon is a massive thorn in the backside of his classmates in year 9. Just one utterance changed their perspective of the world and now they are out to prove him wrong … and they will stop at nothing to do so. Anthon, who we never meet, says “nothing matters” and even as a youngster he…
One of the most creative and mind challenging works I have seen, Phantasmagoria revisits the past in order for the central character to move forward. Briony (played by Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman, Meg Dunn and Elnaz Shessgelani) is an artist – a woman whose difficult personal relationships as an adult have been informed by her upbringing. That has everything…
Political correctness and sibling rivalry get a decent working over in Stay Woke, the brainchild of Aran Thangaratnam. Sai (Kaivu Suvarna) is a 25-year-old of Sri Lankan origin who is involved in medical research. He and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Kate (Rose Adams), a pharmacist, are invited by his older brother Niv (Dushan Philips) to join him and…
Award-winning British playwright Jasmine Lee-Jones’ provocatively-titled Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner appropriately begins in iPhone lighting. Newly-single student Cleo (Moreblessing Maturure) is lying in bed scrolling through Twitter when she comes across Forbes Magazine’s problematic AF celebration of Kylie Jenner as a ‘self-made billionaire”. Under the username @incognegro, she sets about getting Jenner cancelled…
Great energy, a strong score, big voices, creative staging and impressive lighting design distinguish Tommy circa 2022. The story still packs punch. Tommy has seen and experienced too much in his young life. His mum, Mrs Walker (Amy Lehpamer) and dad, Captain Walker (Matt Hetherington) were very much in love, when his dad was sent off to war,…
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a masterpiece from absurdist playwright Edward Albee. It’s a treat for lovers of his provocative works that look at the human condition with all its flaws and extremes. Queensland Theatre presents the State Theatre Company South Australia production of the play with its original cast and it sure does…
A brass band is the connection between two fascinating and compelling unrelated personal stories that are part of a double bill known as Stardust + The Mission. First up is the tale of Victorian trumpeter and bandleader Col Brain, as told by his grandson Joel Carnegie. Joel, who was only two when Col died, chanced upon a…
The challenges and complexities associated with mental health are front and centre in a compelling play based around a young man who hasn’t been (and isn’t) well. Institutionalised for quite some time, Adam (Ben Smalley) now lives alone. He listens to music, watches TV, shops when necessary, cooks some basics and ostensibly keeps to himself. His…
Musical Theatre Australia’s award-winning A Girl’s Guide to World War tells the true story of some amazing women forgotten by our history. If its premise is not made clear by this hint as to its content, its sentiment comes through strongly during the first scene, which sees its narrator (Vix Sheather, lead singer and guitarist…
