Reviews

The prospect of a jazz band being able to make old sounds seem new again is enough to raise audience expectations very high – perhaps unfairly so. New York’s Hot Sardines do put on a more-than-solid show, powered by undeniable instrumental skill and laced with their own unique brand of quirks (include a tap-dancer and a washboard performance) – but this reviewer was ultimately left with the sense of a group that remained relatively contained and conservative.

Women are supposed to be brave and strong but when Mordecai’s father dies, she returns to the Australian home of her Romani family to face a gypsy curse that has all but broken her.

There is the review she cannot shake, the luckpenny she cannot refuse, the splinter she cannot remove, and the family she cannot make peace with.

Australian storyteller Elise Greig draws on her own Romani family history in this four-handed drama that is itself brave and strong, drawing characters that are in turn proud and stubborn, fallible, broken and pure of heart.

Just about everyone knows Neil Simon’s original version of The Odd Couple, with its grumpy male protagonists, so it is a treat to see something a bit different, the female version. What’s more, it works and Blackwood Players have produced a very enjoyable staging of this twist on the iconic storyline, predominantly due to the fantastic performance of one actor in particular.

Some 140 years ago, Pirates was the first Gilbert and Sullivan (fondly referred to as G&S) operetta to preview on the New York stage. Since then, Pirates has become one of the most loved, performed and frequently referenced of their works. It features the famous, much parodied, “Major General’s Song” which has become the basis of innumerable marketing and political campaigns, satire and film and television features.