With selective taste appeal, A Nightime Travesty is a walk on the wild side. It is a parody, an extreme First Nations’ cabaret with music. Earth is a smouldering mess. The crew of a plane is on the last flight out of there, heading for the afterlife. Angel is buckled in, alongside Alexa, while a…
Is he a hero or a villain, a revolutionary or a zealot? Fair questions to pose about a man who spent seven years in exile and a further five in prison. Of course, I speak of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the subject of a powerhouse new play from Patricia Cornelius, directed by Susie Dee. In…
Families – you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them. In short, that is what playwright David Williamson is playing with here … and it gets mighty hot in the kitchen. Well-to-do, widowed family matriarch Monique (Tracy Mann) is looking forward to celebrating her three sons’ birthdays, all of which happen to…
The hero in Hadestown goes to hell and back in his quest to rescue the love of his life. This is a modern retelling of an ancient Greek myth, with the original character names retained. It is a tale of good versus evil, delivered with sass. With confidence and attitude, it is the narrator Hermes…
Life is about sliding door moments. The decisions we make … the directions we choose have consequences. And so it is with matters of the heart. British playwright Nick Payne’s two hander Constellations, which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 2012, tackles this conceit. It starts with a decidedly left of centre…
What a joy laden movie. This could just be the best of the four Bridget Jones films, that date back to 2001 and we have had to wait nine years since the last one. Mad About the Boy, which Jones also narrates, is filled with laughter, romance and reverence. Best of all, she (Renee Zellweger)…
A supernatural force is present in the house Rebekah (Lucy Liu), her husband Chris (Chris Sullivan) and their teenage children Tyler (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang) move into. Tyler is an elite swimmer and it is at his mother’s insistence to maximise his future prospects that they purchase the home. Tyler is Rebekah’s favourite…
Intergenerational trauma characterises the incendiary play Anatomy of a Suicide, which sees three family stories set in different timeframes play out in unison. Carol (Ashleigh Coleman) has had suicidal ideation since her school days. Now married to train driver, John (Stephen Whiley), who cares deeply, she has just made another attempt on her life by…
It was the day live sports coverage became live news coverage of the most heinous kind. That was September 5, 1972. The setting: the athletes’ village in Munich at the 20th summer Olympics. Terrorists affiliated with militant organisation Black September captured and killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. September 5, the movie, tells the story…
Kate Bush – what did I know about the English singer, songwriter, record producer and dancer before I attended An Evening Without Kate Bush? Very little, apart from appreciating her high-pitched tone, having listened repeatedly to her hits, such as Wuthering Heights, Babooshka and Running Up That Hill. And, of course, I had noted her…
