The outrage I felt while watching events unfold here was palpable, just as it should be. Racism, hatred, misogyny, political dirty dealings – it is all there in giant technicolour, so to speak. At the centre of proceedings is a young actor still to make it, a man who would go on to become a…
A warm-hearted, comedic drama about overcoming challenges and dealing with adversity to become your best self, Shoelace Chaser readily resonates. Seventeen-year-old Thea (Leigh Lule) is in her last year at a public school and is a very fast runner. But two years ago, she gave up on a promising athletics future to attend to her…
With strong autobiographical elements, this classic American play, which premiered in Chicago in 1944, is a piece of memory theatre. We are in St Louis in 1937 and Tom Wingfield (Tim Draxl) is both narrator and a central character. He is giving us his own nostalgic, emotional and subjective recollections of what went down. Inspired…
It happened more than 55 years ago – on 15th October, 1970 – and was Australia’s worst industrial accident. I speak of the West Gate Bridge collapse. Thirty-five workers died and 18 were injured. In fact, due to several issues before the bridge fell – identified in the findings of the subsequent Royal Commission –…
What makes life meaningful? Why do we do what we do? These large existential questions are dealt with humorously and poignantly in Jean Tong’s Do Not Pass Go. Flux (Ella Prince) walks into a new job needing the money for surgery, as they are not comfortable in their own skin. There they meet the strait-laced,…
In one of the greatest performances seen on the Australian stage, Kala Gare is a delightful, dynamic, dominant and defiant powerhouse. In short, she – like her character, Sybylla Melvyn – is a force to be reckoned with. She is often argumentative, cheeky and cheery. Set at a time when women were subjugated and “bred”…
Insults, treachery and love are interchangeable in this new, modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, which crackles with absurdity and wit. It centres around the vicissitudes faced by two couples feted to be together, but not before a whole heap of melodrama. I speak of the acerbic Beatrice (Alison Bell) and aristocratic soldier…
After a grand, unexpected and memorable opening to the play, Genevieve Morris introduces herself as writer Cory Taylor. In 2005, just before she turned 50, she was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma and, with that, she was given a death sentence. The way she was told was cold and clinical, a doctor using medical terminology…
Imagine falling in love with a man many years your senior whose wife passed a year earlier, then quickly marrying him and moving to his stunning, sprawling estate. But far from the world being your oyster, you are shut off from his thoughts, isolated and lonely, very much living in the shadow of his beautiful…
MTC keeps lifting the bar. Kimberly Akimbo is a superb, zany, comical and tender production. The five-time Tony Award winner, which included Best Musical, concerns a lonely girl about to turn 16 who has a very rare genetic condition. She ages four to five times faster than normal, which means she looks old long before…
