What price success? That’s the key question asked in Clare Barron’s Australian premiere satirical comedy Dance Nation. Set in the US, the seven kids – six girls and one guy – are looking to replicate their local dance club’s previous successes. They want to make it all the way to the national dance championships. But…
Red Stitch’s 25th anniversary production of Michael Gow’s Sweet Phoebe turns the tables on the platitude that “a dog is a man’s best friend”. Helen (Olivia Monticciolo) and Frazer (Marcus McKenzie) are an uptight couple – both personally and professionally – who look to be going places. She’s a home designer, involved in her first…
Three superb performances highlight Lamb. This sensitive theatrical work combines word and song, and focuses on the hardships of a family born of the land. Lamb concentrates on two generations. The first act starts with the mother’s funeral. The younger of two daughters, Annie (Brigid Gallacher) – a professional singer – has arrived home after…
Tennessee Williams’ one-act piece Suddenly Last Summer is intense and evocative. Vindictiveness is in play for an elderly mother who has lost her son. The year is 1936, and the place the garden district of New Orleans. The woman is Violet Venable (Jennifer Vuletic), who adored her son, Sebastian, a poet. Until the previous summer,…
Poignant. Deeply moving. Brilliantly conceived and executed. A life story rich and redolent. That’s what awaits you when you enter Red Stitch Theatre to experience multi award-winning British playwright Abi Morgan’s Lovesong. Billy and Maggie are a young English couple who have migrated to Australia. He practices as a dentist and she’s a librarian. They…
I long to see whatever Joanna Murray-Smith generates (and her output is prolific) … with very good reason. Her writing is pithy and pointed, insightful and invigorating. The shocking and dynamic Fury is a case in point. Salt is rubbed into raw wounds and new scars created in this “take no prisoners” drama about cultural…
Desire, loss and madness are in the spotlight in the Australian premiere of Right Now. This comedic drama asks the question: what’s real and what is imagined? Quebecois playwright Catherine-Anne Toupin wrote the play, and Chris Campbell translated it from the French. Alice (Christina O’Neill) is a beautiful young woman. She’s been married for three…
Can lightning strike twice? Well, “yes” according to playwright Lachlan Philpott whose work was inspired by real life events. Colder concerns the disappearance of David in Disneyland at age seven and then again in a different place 26 years later. On the first occasion, he reappears after seven frantic hours. The second time, he does…
Three Cs describe Hir: confronting, colourful and comedic. By the way, the title is a gender-neutral pronoun. One character also likes being addressed as “ze”, as distinct from “she” or “he”. After three years in the Marines picking up shattered body parts on the battlefield, Isaac is looking forward to coming home and sleeping in his own bed….
Solid performances feature in desert, 6.29 pm, a world premiere comedy-drama about a dysfunctional family. Events revolve around a difficult 17-year-old gay girl, Xan (Eva Seymour) who doesn’t warm to interaction with other family members. About to graduate from high school, she’s perpetually sullen and angry. Her older brother, Jamie (Darcy Kent), who doesn’t live at home,…
