Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a masterpiece from absurdist playwright Edward Albee. It’s a treat for lovers of his provocative works that look at the human condition with all its flaws and extremes. Queensland Theatre presents the State Theatre Company South Australia production of the play with its original cast and it sure does…
Experience of Shock Therapy’s Locked In is an intense one, elevated by its grounding in truth. The Australian premiere is inspired by two stories – Ghost Boy by Martin Pistorius and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Baub – which both share about the experiences of living with Locked-In Syndrome. That is a rare…
“You have to write everything down,” newbie funeral director Steve (Mitchell Bourke) is told by a colleague on his first call-out. Thankfully for theatre-goers, Toowoomba born playwright Steve Pirie has done exactly that, with Return to the Dirt, winner of the prestigious Queensland Premier’s Drama Award (QPDA), the largest playwriting award in the country, which…
On the Sunday sliver of space between the end of Brisbane Festival and the Tony Awards celebration of Broadway being back, Queensland Theatre’s Artistic Director Lee Lewis launched its 2022 season with promise of continued celebration of the resilience of the arts and cultural sector, and the power of great stories told by talented artists….
Opening night performances often end with a standing ovation, sometimes as a slowly staggered act of obligation. In the case of the conclusion of Suzie Miller’s brilliant Prima Facie, however, Queensland Theatre audience members are immediately on their feet in an acclaim of thunderous applause that lasts through three curtain calls. It is an especially…
Can you be too white? That’s something one of the characters ponders in White Pearl, Anchuli Felicia King’s biting play set amongst the Asian cosmetics industry. It’s almost as if the character in question, Japanese woman Ruki (Mayu Iwasaki) feels it’s her fault that her skin is too white for it to have benefited from the…
One of the joys of experiencing a Shakespearean play on stage rather than page is hearing the poetic beauty of the Bard’s language and expressions nuanced with articulations of human truth. It is initially startling, therefore, that Queensland Theatre’s Taming of the Shrew starts without words. In its opening scene, we are left long in their…
With stone fruit now on sale and schools this week farewelling their Senior students, it is clear that summer holidays are but a whisper away. For many in this COVID-19 year, Christmas holidays will mean a road trip to a regional destination, which makes Queensland Theatre’s world premiere production, The Holidays (which was postponed due…
It seems fitting that, whether coincidentally or otherwise, the day after Queensland Theatre welcomed audiences back to previews of Kieran Hurley’s Mouthpiece, the company unveiled plans for the brave new world of theatre in 2021. The program, the first from Artistic Director Lee Lewis is certainly a season for our times, filled with love, laughter,…
Mouthpiece … it is the name of an artwork by Declan Swan (Jayden Popik in an impressive Queensland Theatre debut), but it also has multiple other meanings within Kieran Hurley’s very clever and often ironic award-winning play of the same name. ‘I wanna live like common people, I wanna do whatever common people do’, Pulp’s…
