Tina: The Tina Turner Musical takes audiences on an emotional rollercoaster, showcasing the extreme ups and even more extreme downs of her legendary career. She was in the music industry for many decades, from her glory Ike and Tina Turner days in the 1960s and ‘70s (at least performance-wise) to her being a ‘has been’…
Superlatives hardly do justice to the magnificent staging of one of Disney’s all-time favourites, Beauty and the Beast, which has been revised and enhanced. The striking sets and glorious costuming set the scene for a joyful celebration of song and dance … and the Hollywood ending that everyone wants to see play out. Fast-moving advances in technology…
Elvis: A Musical Revolution is an exciting spectacle from its outset as the audience is transitioned from its recreated iconic mononymic neon ’68 Comeback Special signage, through an electrifying ‘Burning Love’ dance number, to the Beal Street and Sun Record Studio days of Elvis’ early 1940s and ‘50s life. The award-winning exploration of pivotal moments…
I’ve often commented to people that it is much more difficult to write a glowing review than something at the other end of the spectrum. This experience makes putting together a review of Ad Astra’s Merrily We Roll Along a daunting task for I fear I may have insufficient superlatives for the company’s first musical…
Lunchbox return with their second album for Slumberland Records, Pop and Circumstance. Since we last saw them in 2020 with the catchy After School Special, Pop and Circumstance keeps the same spirit as it melds decades of guitar pop influences into a cohesive and explosive album which maintains the band’s signature lo-fi sound while delivering…
Billy Elliot The Musical remains as moving and evocative as when I first saw it at Her Majesty’s Theatre on 1stJanuary, 2009 … and what a magnificent show it is. For me, this is up there with the best musicals brought to the stage. It is based on the successful 2000 film, which starred Jamie…
Sharing a house with friends and/or strangers can be anything but straightforward. Sometimes, mighty testing, in fact. So it is in the new Australian musical Share House, which is simply delightful. Former classmates Lucy and Jane are as different as chalk and cheese. Now young adults, they have been living together for what seems like forever. Bossy, at times…
The bawdy meets the bizarre in the Australian premiere of the tragicomic musical The Grinning Man, which is based on the 1869 Victor Hugo novel The Man Who Laughs. He is, of course, best known for Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. With music by Tim Phillips and Marc Teitler, lyrics by that pair, Carl Grose…
A corpse dressed to the nines being carted around the French Riviera in a wheelchair. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty in this farcical musical comedy that reminded me of the 1989 movie Weekend at Bernie’s, that became a cult classic. It is the second time the slapstick Lucky Stiff has played in Prahran in a little…
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…
