Reviews

With terrifying realism, punctuated with moments of stylized beauty both sublime and dreadful, Alchemy Artistic’s debut production The Boys is a meticulously crafted exploration of masculinity at its most toxic. Loosely based on Anita Cobby’s murder, the horror here is not in graphic violence but in the hyperreal presentation of male brutality, an emotional landscape increasingly bulging with anger which devastates all when it erupts.

This play pokes gentle fun at the attempt to lead four high-profile, self-absorbed people to understand the impact of their actions and choices on others. They have been forced to do empathy training and the process used to try to develop some understanding in them forms the content of the play.

Alana Valentine gives voice to stirring stories of outsiders who, rejected by mainstream religion, chose instead to be married by Ted Noffs at his famous Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross.  Noff’s Methodist superiors took a dim view of him prioritising social need over doctrine, and his defence against charges of heresy is Valentine’s main story. 

Seedy and dark, in an unassuming location, somewhere in the hub of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, burrowed in the secret hallways of the Melbourne Town Hall, there is Kit Kat Prov - An Improvised Cabaret  (Improvisation Melbourne Company), oozing with eagerness to taunt audiences with a bunch of sassy comedy in their new show.