Reviews

Noël Coward’s Present Laughter is having a surge of popularity in WA, with this being the middle of three productions within a year or so. A successful directorial debut for Matthew Luke Jones, this unusual choice of play for a university drama club plays very well.

PAANDA has a comfortable and pleasant venue, and the comfortable 1930s home of actor Garry Essendine, is nicely created by Thomas Blaffwitch, Zakaria Hourani and Troy Coelho, with good efforts from costumier Georgia Grubelich and props manager Justine Ralph to set the era.

This is surely the best week to spend a night with Paul Keating.  Jonathan Biggins’ masterful rendering of Australia’s 24th Prime Minister, with its witty cuts and tug to the values of true leadership, packs up and leaves us all to it on the day we must vote.

After two decades honing his Keating impersonation in the Wharf Revues, Biggins delivers a fully satisfying 90 minute autobiography of the man and the politician, from his own gilded, faintly Napoleonic sitting room (designer Mark Thompson).

A group of senior women in a care facility are trapped by rising floodwaters. All hopes for rescue seem dashed, when help appears in the form of a young woman called Hope. In preparing to evacuate, the women fight off a looter, challenge one another’s beliefs and reveal some of their darkest regrets.

Bare is not your usual musical. Sure, it’s about love and trust, but its also looks at them in a very different setting and through a much broader, more inclusive eye. Bare is the love story of two schoolboys in a catholic boarding school in America or anywhere. There are whimsical moments, very touching moments and some amusing moments – all told in thirty-six musical numbers that vary in pace and style. Singing a story isn’t ever easy. Singing it when it involves such poignantly contemporary themes is even more challenging.