Tennessee Williams’ one-act piece Suddenly Last Summer is intense and evocative. Vindictiveness is in play for an elderly mother who has lost her son. The year is 1936, and the place the garden district of New Orleans. The woman is Violet Venable (Jennifer Vuletic), who adored her son, Sebastian, a poet. Until the previous summer,…
Nine may not be a conventional musical, but it still has great power. It’s the story of a self-obsessed film director and writer, Guido Contini. Guido is about to turn 40, and his last three movies have been flops. He’s signed on to make a new picture, but has no idea what he’s going to…
David Williamson’s Nearer the Gods intriguingly promotes itself as a show about the politics of 17th Century science. This appears affirmed by its pre-show Purcell Chamber Music sounds and when Isaac Newton (Rhys Muldoon) appears seated at a table centre stage, he is wearing a periwig and dressed extravagantly according to the play’s Restoration-era setting….
Maggie Stone is an Australian play by Caleb Lewis. It was written eight years ago. This is its first outing in Sydney. Maggie Stone (Eliza Logan), a let-herself-go, middle-aged lower rung corporate slave – small loans officer – struggles to maintain an equilibrium of pleasantness around the ‘service’ she’s meant to dole out. Coming from…
You’re in for a treat of subversive circus at its finest when you see Lexicon at a specially constructed tent in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens (opposite the Shrine of Remembrance). Twelve accomplished performers produce the unexpected … and I couldn’t be more pleased. This isn’t the stuff of tired circus acts that have been done…
Melbourne has hosted the English-language debut of Madiba The Musical, after the show had previously opened in France, north Africa and the West Indies.It chronicles Nelson Mandela’s triumph-against-the-odds story. A forbidden love affair between a black man and a white woman provides a fictional parallel tale. The musical skips through much of Mandela’s historical backstory…
Trustees is an obscure work that’s bound to polarise audiences. It’s also bold, audacious and evocative. I’m not convinced I made sense of it all. When the 90-minute play starts, five actors appear on stage One is a moderator, and the other four are on either side of a debate hosted by a (fictitious) body…
Plays like The Architect are why I gained an appreciation of theatre. Because it has the ability to move you … to feel deep-seated emotion. Helen (Linda Cropper) is a no-nonsense woman in her late 60s. She is dying. She lives in Victoria and is in a 10-year relationship with a doting partner, John Stafford…
Luna Gale is an American play, by Rebecca Gilman, written in 2014. Luna Gale has been taken into custody for her own safety. She is the baby daughter of Karlie (Lucy Heffernan) and Peter (Jacob Warner). They are, unfortunately, meth addicts, and have been dangerously neglectful of their child. Karlie’s mother, Cindy (Michelle Doake), a…
Unsolicited Male Savvy, funny and shocking, Unsolicited Male gains momentum as the stakes are ratcheted up. Wendy (Kym Valentine) is a hard worker who regularly puts in 12-hour days. She was in a long-term relationship but it ended abruptly. Now she’s single and her closest thing to a companion is a goldfish. Wendy’s boss Zeke…
