Reviews

There was buzz as friends and families met on the steps of the Town Hall. It grew as the foyer filled and people made their way to their seats or climbed the stairs to the galleries. Philharmonia audiences are always excited whatever the program. They know that Brett Weymark makes every concert special.

Agatha Christie is known to every man and his dog, as she should be. She wrote over 70 best-selling novels and the longest running play ever. This play follows many of her traits where at least one murder occurs and the readers or viewers try to solve the murder/s.  This time everything occurs on a cruise ship going up the Nile River. The cast of eleven make up the guests and various crew members and the murderer has to be one of those who survive the killings. Naturally, in a Christie play, things are never what they seem to be and this kept the audience enthralled to the end.

At last, an Australian musical that is true blue down to its very roots. Those roots are the work of Paul Jennings, our most beloved children’s author, without whom this delightful concoction for kids from 1-100 would never exist.

But it has taken the single-mindedness and multi talents of musical wunderkind Paul Hodge to give us a musical for the ages. It’s not a children’s musical, any more than Matilda (with which it will inevitably be compared) is just for children. It is delightful entertainment for every member of the family.

The Native American reservation has long gone – along with the mighty bison which once roamed the  Great Plains -  but Osage County in Oklahoma still bears the scars of its environmental and cultural destruction, turning into a dustbowl during the excruciating  heat of August.