Brilliant staging and puppetry mark the MTC’s Storm Boy; a theatrical adaptation of Colin Thiele’s 1964 novel of the same name. The book has also been turned into two feature films, one in 1976 and the other earlier this year. This version remains faithful to the original. Youngster (Conor Lowe) lives in isolation in a…
It may be hard to believe that 22 years have gone by since Steven Spielberg directed Jurassic Park, which gave the T-Rex renewed sex appeal. Two further instalments followed in 1997 and 2001, before the dinosaurs went into hibernation. Now they are well and truly out there again. Two decades ago it was Dr John…
Our selection of the best new music across a range of genres from the week ending 18 October 2024. The 23-year-old, Maryland-raised songwriter Jordana (Jordana Nye) (photo above by Kacey Makal) arrived on the music scene with 2020’s Classical Notions of Happiness, an album of lo-fi pop and hushed folk songs recorded in her bedroom….
With its preposterous storyline, Tales of Hoffmann Ooh La La is an energetic mix of opera contemporised with modern references mashed with popular tunes … and it’s a beauty. Full of colour, drama and skulduggery, above all this Parisian jazz burlesque interpretation of Jacques Offenbach’s opera, which premiered in France in 1881, is fun. When…
Lip Service is a new Australian play that premiered in a separate production in London earlier this year with the title: Madame Rubenstein. That production featured the indomitable Miriam Margolyes, as Rubinstein and Frances Barber, as Elizabeth Arden. At the Ensemble we have Amanda Muggelton playing Madame Rubinstein, and it is a performance that I…
Based upon a true story, The Clan is the incredible tale of an Argentine family – the Puccios – which, in the early 1980s, made its living from kidnapping and murder. They live in a typical family home in a traditional neighbourhood. To the outside world a devoted husband and father, Arquimedes (Guillermo Francella), the…
Wow! What a ripping good, most entertaining, magnificently realised origin story. Cruella is clever, funny and sassy – a family comedy turned sophisticated adult offering. English children’s novelist and playwright “Dodie” Smith is best known for the novel The Hundred and One Dalmations (1956), which became the big screen animation 101 Dalmations in 1961. Disney…
Queensland Theatre has played it safe with the original two-person cast of Georgie Parker and Glenn Hazeldine back for a re-run of David Williamson’s 2010 hit play, Rhinestone Rex and Miss Monica. First staged at the Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre, the production returns with original director Mark Kilmurry, designer Veronique Bennett and composer and sound designer…
I am not sure I fully understood, absorbed or appreciated all that The King’s Player was about, even though other patrons seemed to be having a wow of a time. Suffice to say, it is a lone hander and the writer and performer is clearly talented – adept at crafting and playing physical and improvisational comedy….
What eventually anchors the travellers of the world, or returns the travellers to their origins, is family. Kokomo is an assured debut novel that has much to say about how a chance connection can alter a person forever in ways that may not ever be noticed by anyone else. Mina’s life is just about to…
