Reviews

A married war correspondent and a talented young writer meet, scandalously fall in love, and escape to the Greek island of Hydra, where they rule over the growing Bohemian community of expats. They both want to write – and only write – but the reality of requiring an income drags them in different directions.

Based on the true story of George Johnston and Charmian Clift, writer Sue Smith has crafted the tumultuous tragedy from the perspective of their eldest son, Martin and realised it in a one-act play on a wonderfully stark set.

Based on the popular eccentric characters created by cartoonist Charles Addams as well as the internationally successful TV show, The Addams Family – A New Musical was first produced on Broadway in 2010. Whilst it was only modestly successful, nonetheless, this musical has proven to be extremely popular with audiences throughout the world and is seemingly in constant production. This is quite understandable for numerous reasons, but primarily because at its heart it is about ‘family love’.

Not Quite Committed Productions is the labour of love of Tessani Wells and Ella Ragless. Having just finished high school, these two young people have devoted the last six months to creating and staging a musical from the ground up. Full disclosure, Ella is a good friend of my daughter Rouane.

Tessani and Ella have basedLove’s Labour’s Lust loosely around the story of Romeo and Juliet, transferring the setting to the modern era. Romeo becomes a lovelorn fool, Juliet is the epitome of a dumb spoilt brat, and the humour is eyerolling teen sarcasm.

An alarm wakes a man, Guy (Justin Hosking).  ‘Is it now?’ he says.  ‘I thought I had more time.’  This is a play about dying and resisting dying and clinging to what constitutes – good or bad – being alive.  The title, Wakey Wakey, might be an admonishment to us: ‘Wake up – you may think you have ‘more time’, but…