Reviews

Fresh New Worries shines light on the pressures of everyday living in our modern tech world when everything is a Google search away from just another anxiety. Gillian Cosgriff has a ripper of a show running at the Melbourne Comedy Festival and has everybody gasping for more as she juggles her talents around a white  box of  worries plonked  on a Grecian plinth to  the side and her  baby grand piano on the other.

Despite the rather stodgy British title, Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall is a new Australian play, originally commissioned for Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre. It’s the opening night of a new murder mystery, presented by amateur theatre company Middling Cove Players, and many of the cast have 'tested positive’. As, for reasons familiar to many companies, the show must go on, the three remaining actors and anyone else that they can co-opt, pitch in to do the show.

Anton Berezin was the alternate Max Bialystock when The Producers first toured Australia just over 20 years ago, but frustratingly he never got the chance to put the hat on.

Like a dormant volcano waiting a long time to erupt, Berezin filled the stage with oceans of lava-like chutzpah, imbuing the zany and shonky character with comet-like intensity.

A British stand-up comedian with a  lot to say about  his world, the world and everything else that needs a poke, stir and dig, Milo Edwards is a thirty something male who unashamedly hails from the bogan part of Essex - proud of his chequered family roots and  his  very  posh Cambridge education.