It has the look and feel of a silly student production. It marks the first fully written play and directorial debut of Oscar O’Brien. The concept – pinch the brilliance of Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton and make it about ants. I kid you not. And the vast majority of the protagonists in the work…
Misery abounds in Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters. One hundred and 25 years after he wrote it, it continues to resonate. The three sisters referenced in the title moved from Moscow to a provincial Russian garrison town 11 years ago. It is now the first anniversary of their father’s passing and their mother is also no…
Live theatre can throw up curve balls, but this – the 61st iteration of Truth to Power Café globally and its Melbourne premiere – significantly deviated from the script. Some might say it became a train wreck, as a number of the community participants called out the show’s creator for his alleged insensitivity. As a…
Writer and performer Frankie van kan came from a liberal family and, for the most part, was comfortable in her own skin. Now she pulls back the curtain to reveal her life as a stripper and sex worker … and she doesn’t hold back. In fact, Frankie is bold and bodacious, and we – the…
Fear of coming out and the judgment associated with doing so are the subject of a new musical, focusing on the LGBTQIA+ community. A cast of 21 sings and shimmies its way through 16 numbers, including a reprise, as the story surrounding the final days of a political campaign unfold. It is 2017, at the…
American writer Edgar Allan Poe (19th January, 1809 – 7th October, 1849) cultivated mystery and the macabre. There is horror in his work. So, too, in the National Drama School’s What’s This?, devised by graduating actors, and focusing on mental health and torment. Six pieces, each featuring one of the six performers, were either derived…
What you read into and see in dance is very much about interpretation. Here is a piece where the mood is constantly shifting. What starts out as beautiful, gentle, caring and nurturing, turns into something frenetic and disturbing. So, what is at play? Why do we transition from calm to calamitous? Needs, wants and desires…
Life in all its messiness is played out in Lyric Opera’s chamber opera The Children’s Bach. With music by Andrew Schultz and libretto by Glenn Perry, it is based on a novella of the same name by Helen Garner. Set primarily in Melbourne in the 1990s, it centres on the fraught relationships in the Fox…
I can still recall imagery in my mind’s eye after reading Joseph Conrad’s vivid stories about the power of the sea. The fear, the vulnerability, the mystery and the delights of the ocean are apparent in the latest creative endeavour by Theatre Works. Set inside a makeshift, red, wooden phone booth, surrounded by colourful lights, in…
Take Henrik Ibsen’s controversial 1881 play – a scathing commentary on morality – and move it from its original Norwegian setting to the Victorian bush in the late 19th century. That is what the award-winning team of playwright Jodi Gallagher and director/designer Steven Mitchell Wright have done with searing impact. Having spent years in Paris, widow…
