It was 1995 when Australia first produced the enchanting musical The Secret Garden starring Philip Quast, Anthony Warlow and Marina Prior. With book and lyrics by Pulitzer Prize-winner Marsha Norman and music by Lucy Simon, it was based upon the Victorian classic written by Frances Hodgson Burnett in the early 1900s. The Broadway production four…
We’re in the 19th century. Trusting Bella Manningham is fragile. Not long married, she met her now husband Jack in Switzerland and they connected instantly. They moved into an old house – complete with dark, wood panelled walls – in London, but this is a home with a nefarious history. Its previous owner was murdered in a…
Thought-provoking and confronting, Imperfect by Lee Kofman is the book I’ve been recommending to anyone who asks lately. Imperfect (clever cover design makes the title read I’m Perfect, sans apostrophe) skillfully weaves memoir with interviews in a compelling and heart-tugging way. The blurb reads: By the time she was eleven and living in the Soviet…
For those unfamiliar with John Steinbeck’s classic 1937 novella Of Mice and Men, a strumming pre-show soundtrack accompanying the rustic bunkhouse staging (Bill Haycock, designer) plants Ad Astra audiences firmly in its Depression-era California setting. Lighting also warms us to the tender take at the heart of the story as we meet is main characters,…
It’s been a while since we last had a full-scale disaster movie (think Armaggedon, Independence Day), so why not a homegrown product (it was shot on the Gold Coast) starring the man-mountain The Rock? Lawrence (Paul Giamatti) is a seismologist with a nose for big earthquakes and one is about to hit the USA between…
I feel the need… the need for a sequel! And 36 years after the original, director Joseph Kosinski (Only the Brave) delivers a sequel that fans have been craving with Top Gun: Maverick. The film deftly walks the line between paying homage to the past while moving the franchise forward – if you can call…
Although corny at times, the quintessentially Australian comedy The Merger is also endearing. The township of Bodgy Creek has seen better days: the population is dwindling, jobs are scarce and litter has built up around the fading Tidy Town sign. The next victim of the town’s decline is set to be its cash-strapped Aussie Rules…
The Aquarius of the title is a two-storey 1940’s apartment block in the upper-class seaside district of Boa Viagem Avenue in the Brazilian city of Recife. The eponymous apartment block has been the home for Clara (played by Brazilian actress Sonia Braga), a middle-aged former music critic and breast cancer survivor, most of her life….
A washed-up porn actor falls on hard times in Sean Baker’s new film, Red Rocket. It is 2016. Mikey (Simon Rex) turns up unannounced (and broke) at the dilapidated Texas home of his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) and her mother Lil (Brenda Deiss). They want nothing to do with him. But he inveigles himself…
Sheerwater is an emotionally charged work of both hope and despair, beginnings and endings. Calling this book a thriller won’t be doing it a disservice, but it may give the expectation to the reader that they are about to dive into a work of suspense with no lingering take-homes to mull over. Sheerwater is a…
