Reviews

Avenue Q presents performers with the unique opportunity of working with puppets, as well as acting, singing, dancing … and doing things many performers would not necessarily do … on stage that is!

Using very jaunty puppet characters, and a handful of ‘real’ people, writers Jeff Whitty, Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx were able to make some pithy comments about such things as racism, homophobia, homelessness, unemployment, loneliness and marriage in lively tunes and suggestive lyrics.

Imagine Cormac McCarthy's The Road set in the Australian bush, and you have Yellow Skies.

Like the post-apocalyptic dystopic future (aren't they all since 9/11?) presented in The Walking Dead, the apocalypse brings out the worst in people. 'Hunters' pillage and kill to obtain ever-diminishing supplies. Even going as far as eating other survivors.

Noah (Aaron Trevaskis) and Glenn (Arli Faruk) lean on each other to survive and have to decide how to handle a malevolent intruder in their camp (Gabriella Imrich).

An excellent ensemble of multicultural performers work closely collectively to draw together and express the story of star crossed lovers who are both, perhaps a little surprisingly, Palestinian.

He, Rami (Osamah Sami) is a doctor who runs a medical clinic in the USA and she, Jomana (Helana Sawires) a journalist who was born and raised in the Shanti (beach) Refugee Camp in Gaza. He comes and goes into this volatile site of the bitter struggle of the siege of Gaza that took place in 2008.  They are just like young lovers from anywhere and any culture. 

This charming production opens and closes with Thorpe’s signature song, Most People I Know Think That I’m Crazy, and immediately has your toes tapping. Frank Kerr’s renditions of the iconic tunes are delightful. Thorpe’s distinctive music and voice are difficult to emulate but the show is not concerned so much with the recollection of Thorpe himself as it is with showing the importance of his influence on a generation of aspiring youth.