Reviews

The Time Travel Café invites audiences to take a trip through time and have a conversation with history. The premise is that you and your fellow time travellers have arrived at a party inhabited by famous historical figures. Best described as semi-scripted, immersive theatre, the entertainers work through several rooms where they perform some scripted pieces and improvise conversations with the crowd.

Set in war-torn Baghdad in 2003, interestingly, playwright Rajiv Joseph says that Bengal Tiger At The Baghdad Zoo is not necessarily about war and the conflict in Iraq. A short article in the New York Times in 2003 about bombs destroying the Baghdad Zoo, American soldiers guarding the zoo and a soldier who lost his hand feeding a Bengal tiger which was subsequently shot, inspired Joseph to write this complex, multi-faceted play. The style is known as a documentary drama, using imagined and real places and events.

Euphoria, written by Emily Steel, shines a light on the issues of mental health in ways that are both joyful and uncomfortable, all at the same time.

This production is one of the best pieces of theatre I have experienced in a very long time: exquisite acting, brilliant staging and direction, with a cleverly told story. This beautiful and, at times, hilariously funny piece, was written by Steel after research and conversations held with many people across towns in regional South Australia.

The two one-act plays that make up this double bill depict conditions or the cruel prejudices that afflict (almost exclusively) women.  In What Is the Matter with Mary Jane? it is anorexia nervosa and bulimia.  In Slut, it is the misogyny and double standards (and jealousy?) that get a woman labelled ‘slut’.  Both plays give rise to unfashionable emotions– in the current climate - since in both plays the persecutors on stage are other women.