The Disney stage musical Beauty and the Beast The Musical (music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, and book by Linda Woolverton) is a classic; the original Broadway production, adapted from Walt Disney Pictures’ Academy Award-winning 1991 animated feature musical film of the same name, ran for over 13 years on…
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s fantasy novel City of Last Chances came out earlier this year and was marketed as a stand alone. That was a richly conceived fantasy novel centring on a city under occupation and a revolt that brews and explodes on its streets. There was so much world building around the city of Ilmar and…
Eight years since the last of four Hunger Games movies hit the big screen, the franchise refreshes with this prequel, which had me invested. The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes tells the story of the evolution of the eventual president of Panem, the role filled by Donald Sutherland in the original Hunger Games. Here it…
Where did it all go so wrong? After several era-defining movies, the Marvel franchise seems to be sputtering. Judging by the ill-conceived and frankly illogical The Marvels, it seems to have run out of ideas for these characters. The Marvels draws together Captain Marvel (2019), the Disney + mini-series Ms Marvel and a few scattered…
Tobias S Buckell’s standalone speculative fiction novel A Stranger in the Citadel opens with literally a killer first line: The gods say, “You shall not suffer a librarian to live”. Riffing on classics like Fahrenheit 451, Buckell creates a future world in which largesse is provided through giant machines known as the cornucopia and books…
Immersive and interactive theatre excites me. It always has. We don’t see enough of it in Australia. That is why I entered The Austral in Collingwood (a former theatre, cinema and roller-skating rink that dates back to 1921) with a heightened sense of anticipation. Forty-three rooms, eight characters, with us – the audience – free to go where…
SLUTNIK 2: Planet of Incels has cult classic written all over it. Think lashings of The Rocky Horror Show liberally mixed with Magic Mike and you have a starting point. The theme is women treated poorly and men behaving badly. It is a play with a series of up-tempo musical numbers, accompanied by buff male dancers. Unfortunately, I didn’t…
Myra in Space is a dramatic comedy from independent theatre company Baggage Productions, which is dedicated to producing original scripts written by women. It concerns female agency, unfulfilled potential and, possibly, mental illness. Myra Foreman (Kelly Nash) is a 65-year-old married woman with two grown children, who is at the crossroads. For as long as she can…
He Who Drowned the World is the concluding volume in Australian fantasy author Shelley Parker-Chan’s epic Chinese-historical fantasy Radiant Emperor Duology. The first book of these, She Who Became The Sun, was a jaw-dropping debut which went on to make numerous award shortlists, including the Hugo Award,ugo Awar and won the 2022 British Fantasy Award….
Thomas D Lee’s debut Perilous Times is a strange amalgam of post-apocalyptic eco-thriller and classic fantasy liberally laced with plenty of satire. It is set in a Britain ravaged by climate change, features rapacious corporations, plucky revolutionaries and climate refugees. But it also centres around the Arthurian legends and the knights of the Round Table….
