Do you enjoy being challenged mentally and physically? Do you like playing games and solving puzzles? Are you fit, clear of mind and appreciate the stimulation of a team environment? Then this Australian first, Prison Island, is likely to be in your wheelhouse. With 94 “prisons” and nearly 3,000 “cells” in 18 countries, the immersive,…
Talk about playing mind games with words. Seventeen years after MTC staged this Tony Award winning musical comedy, Saltpillar Theatre has brought it back to tickle our funny bones again. It is, indeed, hilarious, more than a touch silly and really fun, but not without pathos. All the young contestants in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling…
An audience giddy with anticipation clapped and cheered through opening night of the revival of the cult musical comedy, as well they might for the cast was in fine voice. When meek, down-and-out florist shop worker Seymour Krelborn stumbles across a new plant species that he names ‘Audrey II’ after his co-worker crush, it seems…
A transparent, highly predictable script underpins a sweet-natured coming of age tale pitched at younger teens. Fifteen-year-old Jack Hooper (William Lodder) and his widowed mother Christie (Frances O’Connor) move to a small town in Western Australia a few years after the death of his father/her husband. She opens a fruit and vegetable shop and he…
Movies about music have had a rough trot recently. From the sugary Trolls: World Tour to the super-serious Echo in the Canyon, for me at least, few have inspired (except maybe Bill & Ted Face the Music). Now director Nisha Gantara (Late Night) dives into a music industry fantasy/rom-com with The High Note. But the…
TC Boyle, the author of Outside Looking In and The Terranauts continues to zig and zag when other authors just stay in their comfort zones. Talk to Me is his 18th novel, and while some of its themes and character types are familiar from Boyle’s earlier works, the subject matter is new and the depth…
Tim Minchin’s genius in picking out the best bits of our common Australian experiences and presenting them back to us like a proud parent is evident once again in Upright. Upright opens with Lucky (Minchin), on the wrong side of the country from his mother who is seeing out her last days at home, in…
Australian science fiction author Jeremy Szal’s debut novel takes a range of science fiction tropes, blends them together and comes out with something new. Stormblood is part military science fiction, part low-down cyberpunk adventure, part murder mystery, part space opera and part first person shooter. All of this in a rattling plot punctuated with plenty…
It is always exciting to see something new from Joanna Murray-Smith and Switzerland did not disappoint. It is a tight 80-minute two-hander based on the character of American crime writer Patricia Highfield – creator of the cool killer Tom Ripley and author of Strangers on a Train, the novel that Alfred Hitchcock made into a…
An inspired production involving top talent, slick staging and creative costumes, David Bowie’s fantasy Lazarus – his final project before his death in 2016 – is a revelation. Entering the Playhouse at Arts Centre Melbourne, I had no idea what to expect. Sure, I admired Bowie’s musical prowess, but I would hardly say I was…
