With overtones of the George Clooney action adventure drama The Perfect Storm, The Finest Hours is a slow moving story of courage and endeavour based upon fact. It starts out as a 1950s romance between a shy, respectful member of the US Coast Guard and the “say it as it is” love of his life,…
Bernadette Robinson brings sizzle to the Melbourne Recital Centre, paying homage to some of the greatest female singers to have played at Carnegie Hall. It is an emotion-charged 85-minute set with the 40-piece Australian Pops Orchestra, conducted by David Young, featuring musical director Mark Jones on piano. Time and again, Robinson extracts maximum value from…
OK, I want you to stop for a moment and imagine a TV show that combines Harry Potter, Jane Austen and The Walking Dead. If you can get your head around that, you’ll have some idea what to expect from Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. This sumptuously made mini-series (7 episodes in total) is an…
Timothy Spall looks nothing like most of the characters he’s played – and yet like all of them. The acclaimed actor is stylishly dressed, even sporting a light jacket despite the oppressive heat outside. He’s a man who seems comfortable in his own skin. Polite and thoughtful, he’s very much the image of a leading…
I Am My Own Wife by American Doug Wright won the Pulitzer prize in 2004. It concerns the writing of this play about a famous German transvestite, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who lived in Berlin through the Nazi and Communist regimes. It was directed by Moises Kaufman for his Tectonic Theatre Project, which has developed other…
A gritty, art house, coming of age tale about a young boy who is bullied and brought up by a single druggie mother, Moonlight plays out as a slice-of-life reality piece. It chronicles a black youngster from primary school age until his early 30s, as he struggles to find his place in the world while…
Melbourne has hosted the English-language debut of Madiba The Musical, after the show had previously opened in France, north Africa and the West Indies.It chronicles Nelson Mandela’s triumph-against-the-odds story. A forbidden love affair between a black man and a white woman provides a fictional parallel tale. The musical skips through much of Mandela’s historical backstory…
Come Rain or Come Shine is a charming, funny and smart romantic musical comedy, which unfolds over a nearly three decades. Set in London, 19-year-old Ray (Angus Grant) is a massive fan of Ray Charles, something he bonds over with fellow student Emily (Gillian Cosgriff). Older style music is their collective passion, much to the chagrin of…
Everything Korean seems to be raging right now – from Squid Game to K-Pop to Korean fried chicken and beer. But these things did not just appear overnight, And much like all of those examples, Korean crime fiction has been bubbling along in the background just waiting for the West to discover it. And there…
The late, great Aretha Franklin was affectionately known as “the Queen of Soul”. She was one of the biggest selling female artists an topped the charts with a string of number one hits like “Respect”, “Think”, and “Spanish Harlem”. But in 1972 she took the radical step of returning to her roots and recorded an…
