If there’s one takeaway to be had from this review of Shake & Stir’s GRIMM, it’s this: parents, leave the kiddies at home; this one is not for them. Treat yourself to a night off and bring the girlfriends along instead. Officially, GRIMM is advertised for ages 14 and above, but it’s a show that…
Stephen Chbosky’s Dear Evan Hansen is a film adaptation of the Tony and Grammy Award winning musical of the same name. And it features the original Broadway lead actor in the pivotal role. Teenager Evan Hansen (Ben Platt) struggles with anxiety and depression, and is seeing a therapist. He is being brought up by his…
The pre-show soundtrack of “Teenage Dirtbag” type songs seems to be an apt choice ahead of La Boite Theatre’s Romeo and Juliet reminding its audience of the youth at the core of this story of vulnerable teenagers infatuated in spite of their familial-tie expectations. We see it on stage also in the show’s performances and…
Amy Ingram has a talent for portraying insecure or downtrodden females and she uses that talent well in this rib-tickling little two-hander as Ashley. She was joined by the equally talented Thomas Larkin as the same-name, same problem character. Between them kept the audience laughing, quietly empathising or groaning at ineptitude. The action was played…
Samuel Langhorne Clemens – a.k.a. Mark Twain – visited Australia in 1895. Advertising posters labelled him the funniest man in the world and audiences loved his sense of humour. Chris Wallace, the man responsible for the book, music and lyrics in Huckleberry: A Musical Adventure, isn’t credited. But he “frocks up” as the great man…
While it’s more common for theatre to be adapted into movies, some have gone the other way. They’re mostly however musicals (a la School of Rock: The Musical) or drawing room dramas. Certainly, the thought of staging a big action movie seems daunting. But the creative team behind North by Northwest have pulled off that…
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…
As its title suggests, Queensland Theatre’s Hedda is an adaption (by Melissa Bubnic) of Henrik Ibsen’s realist classic Hedda Gabler. The original story is of a scheming Hedda. Just into a marriage of convenience, she decides to destroy the life of an old lover, jealous of his new love affair. The original story is pretty…
Melbourne writer Melissa Reeves has adapted Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play, An Enemy of the People. It has been transposed and adapted to contemporary Australian times: 2018. It is a very faithful set of adjustments and is essentially true to Ibsen’s content and spirit – both his politics and his humour. The original play concerns two…
Friends and family gather for a weekend in the countryside in Michael Mayer’s version of Chekhov’s The Seagull. While everyone is caught up in passionately loving someone who loves somebody else, a tragicomedy unfolds about the eternal desire to live a purposeful life. Sorin (Brian Dennehy), a retired government employee, and his sister Irina (Annette…
