Fifty-eight people died and more than 520 were injured in the Las Vegas slaughter. Joanna Murray-Smith wrote her powerful and affecting one-man play American Song long before that tragedy unfolded. Unfortunately mass shootings in the land of the free have become all too common. American Song was commissioned in the US and first produced there last year…
In the original published text of Dinner – which differs from what we see in this production – Paige (Caroline Brazier), a famous gourmet hostess, invites a group of middle class intellectuals (not aristocrats, as suggested in the program) to a, supposedly, celebratory dinner. The event is to celebrate the successful publication of her husband’s,…
Since it began five years ago, StageArt has built a richly deserved reputation for bringing top-flight musical theatre to this country. Four time 2010 Tony Award winner (including Best Musical), Memphis The Musical is its latest and one of its best. Music and lyrics are by David Bryan (the keyboard player for Bon Jovi), with lyrics and book…
Luke Rogers, director of the new Australian play In Real Life, began a collaboration with writer Julian Larnach almost three years ago. In the program notes, Mr Rogers uses a quote from Sherry Turkle, a Professor of Science and Technology: ‘Technology doesn’t just do things for us. It does things to us, changing not just what we…
Calendar Girls was a real hoot when it came out as a movie featuring Helen Mirren and Julie Walters in 2003. I wish I could say the same about the play I saw at the Athenaeum Theatre – but in all good conscience I can’t. Tim Firth adapted the script from his hit film, which…
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is a showcase of all that is great about musical theatre. The music is outstanding – hit after glorious hit – with superb voices to match. The story is beautifully crafted, with plenty of humour, heart and pathos. The staging is colourful, the set changes frequent and seamless, and the pacing…
Slapstick humour abounds in MTC’s revival of Noel Coward’s outrageous comedy Hay Fever. Set in an English country house in the 1920s, the play deals with the four eccentric members of the Bliss family and their outlandish behaviour. Each invites a guest to spend the weekend, without initially telling the others. Sorel (Imogen Sage) and…
An octoroon is a person who has one-eighth black heritage. This now-politically-incorrect titular understanding is at the centre of Queensland Theatre’s An Octoroon we are told in a meta-theatre pre-emptive explanation of the Act Four function in melodrama. The clarification is not necessary, but appreciated given all that is going in American writer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’…
A little over a year ago, the Victorian government was presented with the idea of building a full-scale working replica of Shakespeare’s theatre, the second Globe, to be filled with a festival of the Bard’s masterworks. The concept from founder and artistic director Dr Miles Gregory and executive director Tobias Grant originated a year before…
What a superb piece of writing, so magnificently realised … set up with a crackerjack opening monologue! Big Heart should be mandatory viewing in an ever-burgeoning multicultural Australia. Mother (Andrea Swifte) is affluent – significantly so. She has married and divorced twice and never aspired to give birth naturally. Now though, she decides the time…
