This laboured, overlong comedy inverts the premise behind What Women Want, the 2000 rom-com starring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt. In What Men Want, Taraji P Henson plays Ali, a self-absorbed and ambitious agent working in the male-dominated world of sports management. While she represents a number of Olympic athletes, she hasn’t got an NBA,…
The past and the present collide in a story that involves reframing a tainted history. We are in Gippsland in the 1840s and a white woman is discovered near death, washed up on a beach. Just what happened to her remains the stuff of myths, but she is said to have been rescued by and…
A superb musical score and the rich, strong and pure voice of Alinta Chidzey (Show Boat, Singin’ In The Rain, Chess, West Side Story) make the world premiere of this new Australian musical one not to be missed. CROSSxROADS is a story of love and loss with more than a touch of Sliding Doors (the…
Recently we saw Icelandic director Baltasar Kormakur’s Everest, a dramatic and at times thrilling recreation of the tragedy that struck a group of climbers on Mount Everest in 1996. That film was enough to put you off climbing mountains for ever! Now Australian director Jennifer Peedom (Miracle On Everest, and she worked as high altitude…
Rubika Shah’s documentary feature White Riot re-tells the inspired story of Rock Against Racism. RAR was a grassroots movement that stymied the rise of racism in 1970s Britain by galvanising youth through politically charged music. The film contextualises a growing white supremacist sentiment born from the Nazi Party, but manifesting in numerous cultural and political…
A glorious spoken and sung hoot, this is an audacious retelling of Pride & Prejudice. Just what would author Jane Austen have thought of it? I dare say she would be figuratively rolling around the aisles, just like the rest of us. Scottish playwright Isobel McArthur simply goes “bang” and wows us, time and again…
Devastating bushfires and a baby koala and miner in peril. These are just two of the interwoven threads that run through the excellent, interactive solo work KOAL, in which sound, music and lighting play a critically important role. The piece was conceived by performer Jacinta Yelland. In 2019, she was sitting in her living room in the United…
The term “creepypasta” is one I’d never heard of before, but apparently it was created to describe internet-spread urban legends. One of the more notorious was that of the so-called Slender Man, a boogieman that was created by Eric Knudsen under the pseudonym of Victor Surge in 2009. The character went viral on social media,…
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has fascinated and delighted readers for almost two centuries. In fact, it set a new standard for the holiday, inspiring the spirit of the traditional Victorian Christmas and beginning a host of customs that are still popular today. But while most readers are familiar with the beloved tale, few know the story…
MTC keeps lifting the bar. Kimberly Akimbo is a superb, zany, comical and tender production. The five-time Tony Award winner, which included Best Musical, concerns a lonely girl about to turn 16 who has a very rare genetic condition. She ages four to five times faster than normal, which means she looks old long before…
