PIP Theatre’s first offering for 2024 is the hilarious Banging Denmark, written by Van Badham and directed by Heidi Gledhill. Badham wrote the play as a way to cope with the horrendous online trolling she faced as a journalist for The Guardian. Banging Denmark was shortlisted for the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Nick Enright…
With ‘gaslighting’ being the word of the year in 2022 and mentioned across social media and in real life countless times, it won’t be a surprise to contemporary audiences what the essence of this play is about. It’s interesting to note that Patrick Hamilton wrote the original back in 1938 when its revelations about a…
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…
Like many musicals, every production of, Rent is somehow a bit different, especially as more time passes since the iconic rock musical’s debut on Broadway now over 25 years ago. Rent went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (awarded posthumously to its creator, Jonathan Larson who tragically died at the age of 35,…
It’s a case of feathers meeting fluro when performers in Polytoxic’s new work, Dangerous Goods, initially ensemble in movement of feathered fans to ‘light our fire’. Continuing with theme of the collective’s 2021 Brisfest show, Demolition, the fluro comes from the hi-vis tradie uniform costumes… and also the more revealing hints from beneath them. It’s…
For those who like the unconventional, Sophia = (Wisdom): The Cliffs is heaven-sent. Promoted as “Part dada, slapstick comedy, part philosophical vaudeville interrogation into the human psyche and fully a production of the true avant-garde”. I couldn’t have put together a better word-salad myself. Written by American playwright Richard Foreman, the play falls into a…
Rouge your knees and dig your seamed stockings out, Chicago is back in town for an Australian tour. This revival of the Broadway classic features iconic Fosse choreography, slick costumes and a pared-back set that gives equal stage-space to a live 15-piece jazz orchestra playing Kander & Ebb’s memorable songs. To recap: In 1920s Chicago,…
Contemporary horror/fantasy author Clive Barker’s The History of the Devil focuses on the greatest trial in history. A deprived and lovelorn Satan is tired of living in hell and wants to go back to Heaven, but first he must undergo a trial for his time on Earth. Ambitious lawyers for the prosecution Tiana Varcoe (Lisa…
Social media is a language. Those you speak it will appreciate the authenticity of the early scenes of Lewis Treston’s IRL, which sees 17-year-old Alexei (Will Bartolo), back and forthing in messenger conversation with his closeted internet crush Thaddeus (Byron Lankester Howells), complete with the awkwardness and overthinking insecurity the manifests itself in any such…
This exhilarating hip-hop musical from Queensland Theatre is a huge crowd-pleaser, ending the year of productions on a high note. Set immediately post-Vietnam predominantly in a refugee camp in Arkansas, U.S.A., with flashbacks to Saigon, Vietgone is written by Qui Nguyen (who’s since gone on to write for Disney animation projects since penning this in…
