Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge has never seen the likes of it. Take the classic tale A Christmas Carol and put a Jewish twist on it. That is what writer Elise Esther Hearst has done with Phillip Kavanagh … and they have absolutely nailed this world premiere. Oy Humbug! Channel Seth Cohen (Adam Brody) on the US TV series…
The turbulent life of jazz singer Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan) is on show in an intimate club setting in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. Holiday (7th April, 1915 – 17th July,1959) was nicknamed Lady Day by her friend, saxophonist Lester Young. Among her musical influences were Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Being an African…
Their father was big and strong. He could be fun, but more often than not he was scary, angry, brutal and dogmatic. He couldn’t land a job and so money was always tight. He drank. After surviving WWII, which included being shipwrecked and a prisoner of war on the Thai-Burma Railway, he had PTSD. His wife,…
Now in her mid 80s, Caryl Churchill is regarded as one of the world’s greatest living playwrights. Her work is innovative … enigmatic, challenging and provocative, inevitably open to interpretation. Escaped Alone and What If If Only is the world-first pairing of two separate short plays by the acclaimed Brit. The former, which runs for 45 minutes,…
A new Australian musical, Bloom hits the right notes. The delivery of effective aged care remains a contentious issue that has brought great consternation to many, before, during and after the COVID-19 lockdowns. Writer Tom Gleisner has taken that and run with it to create a humour-filled portrait of a facility for the third generation in desperate…
Revenge is the cornerstone of Is God Is, an incendiary play that explodes onto the MTC stage. What a hard life twins Anaia (Henrietta Enyonam Amevor) and Racine (Masego Pitso) have had in America’s south. It is a legacy of an ugly incident sparked by their father (Kevin Copeland) who tried to burn to death their mother…
Racism, disadvantage, “the mob” and money collide in the incendiary new work from Declan Furber Gillick, five years in the making. Commissioned through MTC’s NEXT STAGE Writers’ Program, the cumulative impact of the 100 minutes is devastating. Indigenous man Jacky (Guy Simon) is on the road to “making it”, or so it seems. He is renting a…
Navigating the vicissitudes in a relationship can be tricky at the best of times, but cross-cultural unions more often than not face additional difficulties. So it is with Ella (Eleanor Barkla) and Hasseb (Oz Malik). The pair meets at a performance workshop. They are from opposite sides of the Thames. He is a poet and she is…
Absurdist and existential, Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days is a play strictly for selective tastes. That is not to overlook Judith Lucy’s stellar performance in it, rather it reflects my opinion that it will be admired by some and frustrate others. It is about the passing of time and the impact it has on us as we…
Tessa Ensler (Sheridan Harbridge) is a successful barrister. She knows the tricks of the trade and defends her clients – many alleged sexual offenders – vehemently. She relishes the game … circling witnesses until she is ready to pounce, having lulled them into a false sense of security. She is good … very good. Those who know her,…
