A superb production breathes new life into the multi award-winning story of vice that is Bob Fosse’s Chicago. We’re in the roaring Twenties. Married to the dim-witted Amos, chorus girl Roxie Hart is enraged when Fred Casely breaks off an affair and shoots him dead. She tries to pin the murder on her hapless husband, although that backfires. Sent…
Quilt’s second album, Held In Splendor, was one of 2014’s biggest surprises. I ranked it the #9 album of the year but in the twenty-four months since its release I confess that I kind of forgot all about them. When word came out of a new record from them I went back and listened to…
“Like” and “you know” – two of the most overused phrases in the English language. They irritate me; and the former is thrashed in the opening scene of Eighth Grade. I had a teenage daughter (now over that hump, thank goodness), so I know what overuse of language sounds like. In this case, they’re spoken…
Club Vegas is a fulsome variety show that would be quite at home on casino stages around the world. It combines modern interpretations of hit songs with rolled gold classics and colourful, bejewelled, bedazzling costuming with feathered headdresses to die for. Quite the spectacle. I couldn’t get enough of it. The dancers take to the stage from the…
The moral dilemma. Juicy. Delicious. Ideal for the stage. It is at the heart of Only Child, a new play from Leah Annetta. Divorced, uptight Veronika (Sarah Hallam) runs a wedding planning business. She lives with her mother Barbara (Michele Stayner) and her high achieving, 18-year-old daughter Anika (Alessandra Alessio). Anika, in her final year…
Listening to the latest from Icelandic chanteuse Björk, can feel like stepping through the curtain to enter an audio/visual piece at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. At first it can feel jarring, disorienting as the music pulses with what may seem at times like several different pieces of electronic music at once, and…
Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap opened in London’s West End on 25th November 1952 and has been running continuously (save for the COVID lockdown) ever since. It is fast approaching 30,000 performances, making it by far the longest running show (of any type) in the modern era. The play is also known for its twist ending – the audience asked…
Comedian and actor Mary Coustas is an emotional powerhouse, whose hour-long show endears her anew to a devoted fan base. She is an enormous talent who draws upon her personal experiences (how her life has been shaped) to make us laugh and cry, through love and loss. Combining verbal and physical comedy with pathos, her stories primarily…
Rainbow’s End is a play by Jane Harrison, author of Stolen (1998). Both of these plays have become part of the school HSC syllabus. Rainbow’s End, written in 2005, is an evocation of the lives of three generations of First Nation’s women: the Yorta Yorta nation, in the 1950’s, in the northern Victoria region of…
I’ve been a big fan of the Stella Hardy series (Good Money, Too Easy and now Shoot Through), and I will admit that the setting of this one appealed enormously – what with Stella returning to the family farm in the Wimmera (there’s something going on with lots of books being set in that part…
