While growing up, I was captivated by subversive stories in a classical cartoon segment known as Fractured Fairy Tales. That aired as part of the TV series The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. It turned familiar yarns about the likes of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and many others on their head. All these…
Sometimes an album comes along that is so likable that it begs to be listened to. Some albums are creative, experimental, different, and noteworthy. We can recognize those albums as being “great” but it doesn’t mean that we want to keep listening to them. The Fratellis haven’t done much here on their fourth album (Eyes…
Dark and dramatic comes this contemporary adaptation of Georges Bizet’s 19th-century opera. What choreographer John Inger has done in recreating Carmen is visionary – bold and breathtaking – retelling the tale captured in Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella. Inger has reimagined the classic opera, with its electric score, as realised by Orchestra Victoria, under the baton…
Mufasa (the movie) explores how Mufasa (the lion cub who almost drowned in a flood) was separated from his parents and went on to become king of the jungle. His story is told by shaman mandrill Rafiki to another young lion cub, Mufasa’s granddaughter, Kiara (the daughter of Simba and Nala). Lending a mischievous hand…
Twenty-one-year-old Leo Joseph-Connell (Shiv Palekar) values his independence. He’s fallen out with his mother Jane and is on a cross-country bike trip. The family hasn’t heard from him in weeks and they are worried. Leo lands on the doorstep of his 91-year-old grandmother Vera Joseph’s (Nancye Hayes) apartment in Greenwich Village, dirty and smelly. He’s…
Grab your tuning forks, sequin vests and spirit fingers: the Barden Bellas are back to serenade us in Pitch Perfect 2. The clever followup to 2012’s runaway smash Pitch Perfect, this sequel reunites the core acapella afficionados for their senior college year after their win at the national titles. The troupe suffer a global fall…
Klara and the Sun is the first novel from Kazuo Ishiguro since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017 and his 2015 novel, the Arthurian-inspired The Buried Giant. While delivery a very different main character and sketching in the outlines of a unique future world, Klara and the Sun is thematically consistent with much…
The Overcoat is a new Australian work – a musical – by Constantine, Michael and Rosemarie Costi – based on the eponymous Nikolai Gogol short story from 1842. The literal translation used is by Alena Lodkina. Gogol seems to be the parent to a writer like Kafka and his more familiar concerns. In this version…
There is one way to compromise a dramatic tale of obsession gone horribly askew that features impressive staging. Get the sound mix wrong. Unfortunately, that was the case at the premiere of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The music totally overwhelmed the opening number and did so again during parts of Act II. So much so that…
The kid who fell to Earth? In 2018 a small group of astronauts head off to live on Mars in an experimental colony known as East Texas. This space mission is the brainchild of Nathaniel Shepherd (Gary Oldman), a billionaire entrepreneur clearly modelled on Richard Branson, who is the CEO of Genesis Space Technologies. But…
