The movie musical of the Broadway musical of the movie of the book. That’s what we’ve got in 2024, with a film adaptation of the successful 2018 Mean Girls musical being released twenty years after the original hit movie penned by the wonderful Tina Fey. It made a household name out of Lindsay Lohan, and…
Sensual, highly energetic and colourful, Jazz Men appears intent on giving Magic Mike a run for its money. I speak of 11 locally based dancers – some finely chiseled – strutting their stuff in front of a most appreciative audience who don’t hold back. The showmen change their costumes – which range from the elegant to the…
If you want to see a show full of feel good, life affirming entertainment, you should look no further than The Choir of Man. Straight from London’s West End, it is sensational. Music, revelry and heartfelt exchanges with the audience are the name of the game and the punters get to join it even before the show…
Some of the most extraordinary and outrageous feats performed on stage. Add next level, utterly hilarious, child participation and you have Circus 1903. No Big Top here. Rather, the creature comforts of Arts Centre Melbourne’s premier venue. It goes down a treat thanks to the supreme artistes and the cheeky and cherry patter of ringmaster David Williamson. He is…
Magic Mike or Santa? Honestly, there are times you can’t tell the difference in this sexually promiscuous, irreverent Christmas revue that provides no shortage of fun. It upends everything you thought you knew about the festive season and keeps the laughs coming. A traditional Christmas carol behind curtains gives way to smut and innuendo, which the enthusiastic…
Actor-director Bradley Cooper shows his success in A Star is Born was no fluke with Maestro. This impressionistic portrait of the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein is technically dazzling, although its oblique approach may distance some viewers. As with A Star is Born, Cooper again pulls triple duty as director, actor (in the titular role…
Acceptance is the theme of the musical Kinky Boots, which is based on the 2005 film of the same name. Charlie Price is a young man destined to take over his family’s Northampton-based shoe manufacturing business – the fourth generation to do so. His father Harold has never thought otherwise. And yet, Charlie doesn’t have a passion for…
Women treated shamefully by the Aussie Rules’ boys’ club. That is the theme of Patricia Cornelius’ gritty, feminist play In the Club. It concerns three young women who hook up with members of a football team and pay the price. Annie (Eva Seymour) transitions from a naïve, football-mad 15-year-old to an exploited 16-year-old, which sets the tone…
Sensual and alluring, Matador combines scantily clad performers with pulsating English and Spanish beats, and acrobatic acts in a fast-moving show. It is a fusion of dance, circus and burlesque, a modern celebration of forbidden love, carnal desires, passion and pain in its many coloured hues. At its core is acceptance of diversity. Eleven performers cavort, clamber…
Featuring 22 tracks from ABBA, Mamma Mia! The Musical is bright, breezy, energetic and heaps of good-natured fun. Whenever it returns, it always goes down a treat and I never tire of seeing it. The show premiered in Oz on the 9th June 2001 and played for four years to more than 2.2 million people in eight…
