Blasted is a remarkably insightful and deeply traumatising work from British playwright Sarah Kane, first performed in 1995. Ian (David Woods) is a broken, middle-aged journalist. He’s brought a much younger woman, Cate (Eloise Mignon) – who he’s known for some time – to an upmarket hotel room. But when she resists his advances, he…
You might have seen Lars Von Trier’s film Melancholia. This world premiere stage production is based on it. But if you enter the theatre knowing nothing about it, I dare say you’re likely to find much perplexing. Suffice to say that like the film, events unfold in two distinct chapters. Underpinning both is depression that…
Good Muslim Boy is a tale of procrastination, bureaucratic somnambulance and frustration, but it’s brilliantly told at a breakneck pace. It’s fast, funny and powerful and had me fretting for the hero and so much relating to his predicament of being stuck in a foreign place where no one really cared about your predicament. It…
Indigenous Australia’s fight for justice and equality is given superhero treatment in Blackie Blackie Brown. We may well be looking at the stage equivalent of the movies Deadpool or Kick-Ass. Exaggerated theatrics are liberally supplemented by evocative graphics, animation, mock television news reports, and mood lighting. The staging is most effective. A series of joined…
Darwin is sweltering and it’s raining cats and dogs. Ruben’s (Dion Williams) life is in the toilet. A court has sentenced him to attend counselling after he hit a cop, but he isn’t willing to play ball and he makes his situation worse. He’s full of resentment, struggling to cope with his brother Joe’s death, for which…
Going Down gives cultural identity a good old-fashioned pounding. A stellar lead performance provides the highlight of this 90-minute play (no interval). Hmong-Australian playwright Michele Lee (winner of the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Rice) provides the source material. Going Down is one for the “me” generation; the hedonists who would rebel against their past. The…
Going Down by Michelle Lee is a new Australian play. Last year, the Griffin Theatre presented her play, Rice. Natalie Yang (Catherine Davies), a Chinese-Australian, has written her first book, “Banana Girl”, a no-holds-barred sex memoir. No-one is really interested. On the other hand Lu Lu Jayadi (Jenny Wu), an Muslim-Australian from Indonesia, has written…
A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer is heartfelt, bold, funny and heart-wrenching. It’s also a flawed blancmange as a piece of performance art that many will, no doubt, applaud. I love the energy and vitality of Bryony Kimmings. She’s one of the playwrights, and the narrator of the piece. The single mum tells a story of…
