A pianist from an ice cream parlour (Connor Dariol), a psychologist (Shamita Siva) and a physicist (El Kiley) get together. No, that’s not the beginning of a bad joke, not even when I tell you the three come from different time zones. The pianist was born 148 years ago … and is, not surprisingly, dead. The psychologist believes…
So, okay, off the top here’s my recommendation – go along and see Not Today and fall in love with the zany personality that is the essence of talented performer Ally Morgan. She often talks fast – mighty fast. She is anxious and passionate about climate change, which she is keen to “fix” in just a…
One of the most creative and mind challenging works I have seen, Phantasmagoria revisits the past in order for the central character to move forward. Briony (played by Bernadette Trench-Thiedeman, Meg Dunn and Elnaz Shessgelani) is an artist – a woman whose difficult personal relationships as an adult have been informed by her upbringing. That has everything…
Can plants talk? Some scientific research suggests they are sentient. A humorous new work by Karla Livingstone-Pardy and Zachary Sheridan (who are the writers and directors) takes this concept quite a few fanciful steps further. It concerns a young woman named Anne (Julia Kok) who was abandoned by her parents when she was a child in the…
The Great Australian Play is a thoroughly bewildering take on Australian history – specifically one of this country’s most alluring legends – and contemporary Australia. Of the former, I speak of a vast gold-bearing deposit in the MacDonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory purportedly discovered by Harold Lasseter around the turn of the 19th century. After…
Men treat women badly. Indigenous Australians are often unfairly targeted. Not all men. Not all indigenous Australians. Enough though to call it out … still, regardless of all that has been said and written about these subjects. She is Vigilante deals with these issues, with strength and purpose … with drama, pathos and humour. Seven…
Imagine you’re the last person alive and all Earth’s resources have been depleted. Autocannibal explores this premise in a confronting one-person play created and performed by the highly talented Mitch Jones. It’s performance art mashed with circus skills and clowning. Jones is agile, powerful and bold. His character adopts a survival-at-any-cost mentality, with options fast…
A driven, high achieving woman melts down when two relationships go awry in Drive. Writer Rebecca Meston was inspired by the true story of former NASA astronaut Lisa Nowak. You might remember Nowak as the person who drove non-stop for 14 hours to confront her ex-lover’s new partner. Wearing a disguise, she also a knife,…
Fleur Kilpatrick’s stage adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five explores the horrors of war and the effects of PTSD. The play centres on the Allies’ firebombing of Dresden between February 13 and 15, 1945 in which tens of thousands of people died. The book’s narrator (and author), who’s also part of the play, has…
As an arts lover and reviewer, I try to enter a theatre without knowing anything about the production I’m about to see. It’s usually possible by steering clear of promotional guff. I like to be surprised and hopefully engaged by what I see through fresh eyes. In that way, I feel I can tell whether…
