Reviews

Thyestes

Written by Thomas Henning, Chis Ryan, Simon Stone, Mark Winter after Seneca. Adelaide Festival / The Hayloft Project / Belvoir. Directed by Simon Stone. Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. March 2 - 7, 2018.

How do we explain, understand and live with the acts of humans’ inhumanity to others, and our unceasing ability to commit atrocities, create fear, inflict pain, denigrate and dehumanise others?

We create myths, we attribute labels to the perpetrators, and we see and think of these acts and their agents as aberrations. We ask ourselves and others, “How could they do this?”

Thyestes shares ‘the moments between atrocities” and shows us that it isn’t a matter of them, but us. It is a part of how we as humans are.

Memorial

Adelaide Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 1st - 6th March, 2018

Homer’s epic 2,800 year old poem Iliad describes a few weeks in the final year of the siege against the city of Troy, in particular the quarrel between King Agamemnon and Achilles.  In Memorial: An excavation of the Iliad, published in 2011, author Alice Oswald set out to translate the Iliad’s atmosphere, it’s ‘enargeia’ rather than its story. In doing so she has stripped the Iliad of its narrative and drawn forth the biographies and brutal killings of the 215 soldiers Homer named.

The Men in Black

Performed by Chris Callaghan as Johnny Cash and Dean Bourne as Roy Orbison - Empire Theatre, Toowoomba (2 March 2018) -touring VIC, NSW, and ACT until end of May 2018.

Why do we love tribute acts? Braving the afternoon thunderstorm to see The Men in Black tribute to Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, a capacity crowd at Toowoomba’s Empire Theatre provided the answer: performers as unique as Cash and Orbison – early originators of popular music as we know it today – deserve to be heard by their fans and also discovered by new audiences. And, for the musicians, it must also be difficult to resist the back catalogue of songs that today’s performers can only dream of.

Worktable

Festival of Live Art. Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall. March 14 – 25, 2018

Worktable is a new participatory live art installation by Kate McIntosh and is part of  the Live Art Festival from 14-25 March at the Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall.

As part of the test audience for the new show I feel at ease to say it was quite an inner exploratory adventure. The workstation ambience had a pensive atmosphere. Worktable is an active, creative, meditative and or destructive participatory exploration of live installation.

True Minds

By Joanna Murray Smith. Centenary Theatre Group. Director: Gary O'Neil. Chelmer Community Centre, Chelmer, Qld. March 3 - 24, 2018

Joanna Murray Smith is one of Australia’s most prolific and popular playwrights. She knows her middle-class audience and writes accordingly. The premise of True Minds is that a man never marries a woman his mother doesn’t approve of, a concept espoused in a best-selling book by the protagonist Daisy Grayson (Beck Haining).

Gingzilla: Glamonster vs the World

Adelaide Fringe Festival 2018. Spiegel Zelt at Gluttony. February 27 to March 18 2018

I used to think that Rhonda Burchmore had the longest legs in the business, that is, until I met Gingzilla: Glamonster vs the World.

The show starts before you even enter the Spiegel Zelt. Glamzilla, ever the hostess, dressed as a cinema usherette from bygone days, passes out cups of popcorn and Jaffas and gets to know her audience.

Hamlet

Written by William Shakespeare. Adapted by James Elliott. Directed by James Elliott and Kat Dekker Presented by Growl Theatre. Windsor School of Arts. Feb 23 - Mar 10, 2018

Some 417 years after an all-male cast first performed Hamlet it’s been reimagined with an all-female ensemble. It sounded like an exciting proposition. Not only were all the roles played by women, the roughly four-hour script was cut down to a little over two hours long. Some scenes and characters were entirely removed and new dialogue and songs were added. The resulting script was one that heightened the feelings of Hamlet’s existential madness and did create a somewhat different narrative journey to the one with which you’d be familiar.

Mental As Everything

Australian Premiere. Presented by Under The Microscope. Adelaide Fringe. Queen's Theatre At The Lab. Playhouse Lane, Adelaide. March 2-4, 2018

Imagine seeing courage sharing a stage with cabaret. Tucked away in the city, far from the bright razzamatazz of Fringe activity in Adelaide’s East End, an unassuming performance brilliantly showcases this rare mix and it’s taken my breath away.

Mental As Everything stars Damon Smith and Adam Coad. Each suffers from a mental health issue, but they face it head on in this show, a production that melds mental health with music in a unique, entertaining and impactful way.

Split

Adelaide Festival. AC Arts Main Theatre. 2 - 5 Mar, 2018

Split is a tour de force of dance. The opening night audience was one that clearly appreciated and understood dance. Split opened to a full house, and as seems to be fashionable, started eight minutes late.

La Traviata

By Giuseppe Verdi. Opera Australia. Directed by Elijah Moshinsky. Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. March 1- 27, 2018

The standing ovation for this revival of La Traviata is for one, primary reason: the star, Nicole Car. This young Australian soprano is triumphant in her debut as Violetta.

The other lead actors are good too - and this is a fine Opera Australia production, even if it feels past its prime. But what stands out is Car’s wonderful voice: warm, gorgeous and able to power through any scene, even in her character Violetta’s most vulnerable moments.

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