Reviews

Open Homes is a wonderful initiative and collaboration between Jeffrey Tan from Singapore and South Australia’s No Strings Attached Theatre of Disability and is one of the highlights of this year’s Oz-Asia Festival. As the program notes state, ‘Behind every door of every home, there are stories that might never be told. Open Homes is a chance to hear them.

The thriller Wait Until Dark, produced by Fremantle Performing Artists, is playing to capacity audiences at The Actors Hub studios.

Unusual to see thrillers on stage, this 1966 classic keeps its audience on the edge of their seats, while it features a bravura role for its leading actress. 

Suzy Hendrix is a blind Greenwich Village housewife who becomes the target of three con-men searching for a doll, containing drugs, which Suzy’s husband has unwittingly trafficked from Canada, for a woman who has since been murdered. 

Originally commissioned to commemorate 100 years since the involvement of Australia in World War 1, rather than a look at war itself (there are no soldiers) 100 Reasons For War, a vignette style play, looks at the little wars played out in lounge rooms, classrooms and cafes, while we hear a long list of wars and conflicts that have occurred since the beginning of “the war to end all wars”.

The Laramie Project is a 2000 play by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theatre Project  about the reaction to the 1998 murder of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in Laramie Wyoming. Developed by members of that company, it has become a modern classic and is an example of verbatim theatre, based on the news reports, journals, diaries and interviews conducted, lovingly and powerfully documented to create this powerful, three act play.