A poignant and amusing slice of life musical, it is not hard to see why Fun Home received five Tony Awards for the original Broadway production. That included Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score. Now, fortunately, Melbourne Theatre Company and Sydney Theatre Company have picked it up and done a wonderful job…
When Black Country, New Road released their debut (last year’s For The First Time), they were lumped together with a slew of new UK bands who mixed post-punk arrangements, prog-rock structures, and half-spoken/half-sung vocals—bands like black midi, Squid, Shame, Dry Cleaning, and Sorry (among many others). But even within that group BCNR seemed like an…
Marry Me is a slick but enjoyable rom-com starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson. Kat Valdez (JLo) and Bastian (Maluma) are superstars of song … and the hottest couple on the planet. Their social media presence is in the stratosphere and their megahit Marry Me is about to come true in front of 200 million…
Lisa Ellery takes a risk in her debut crime novel Private Prosecution. That is to have a main character who, while his heart is sometimes in the right place, is not particularly likeable. Another is that the story that he is dropped into the middle of can be a little far-fetched. But as long as…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 4 February 2022. The music of saxophonist and composer Immanuel Wilkins is filled with empathy and conviction, bonding arcs of melody and lamentation to pluming gestures of space and breath. Listeners were introduced to this riveting sound with his…
What a thoroughly entertaining showpiece! I last saw The Wedding Singer when it played at the Athenaeum Theatre last May. Now, at the State Theatre, at the Arts Centre, it remains just as fun filled and comedic, but it appears even slicker. The leads are intact among the 20-strong cast and are truly memorable. Collectively, the company sing,…
A family secret is the elephant in the room when three generations of women share luxury hotel accommodation in Copenhagen as one of them prepares to accept a prestigious award. That is Emma (Kate Cole), a middle-aged author, who is about to receive the Hans Christian Andersen Award (the “Little Nobel Prize”) for children’s literature. She is…
Hindsight, they say, is 20-20. But the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia can distort the lens. In Belfast, director Kenneth Branagh delivers a love letter to his childhood hometown. But I couldn’t shake the feeling his memory might have taken the hard edges off a tumultuous time in Northern Ireland. That’s understandable – after all, the…
Artificial Intelligence turns on its creator in Moonfall. The stakes for Earth and its inhabitants, not to mention the Moon, couldn’t be higher. It starts with an incident in space in 2011. Three astronauts – Jo Fowler (Halle Berry), Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Alan Marcus (Frank Fiola) – are in space on a satellite…
While some artists have used the shutdown of normal life due to the pandemic to hibernate in their studios and record new music, former Smoking Popes songwriter and frontman Josh Caterer has now delivered his second “live” concert album, serving up some tasty covers along with choice songs from his deep catalog of material. Late…
