Reviews

This musical is arguably a classic and deservedly popular, as an expectant full house at the State Theatre proved at curtain up.

This musical retelling of the story of Joseph, the favourite son of Jacob, has added flair to the original biblical story. Joseph is sold into slavery by his envious brothers but his ability to foretell the future through his vivid dreams leads to his rise from prison, acceptance by the pharaoh and final reconciliation by his suffering brothers. This type of musical, where there is very little spoken dialogue through-out, is far more challenging and Mousetrap Theatre has risen to that challenge.

Merciless Gods tells merciless stories.  There are eight stories here, each with its own burden of pain, each one taking the audience (if we care to go) into depths of sorrow, into places and emotions that are faced unflinchingly.  The stories are linked by theme and some characters recur.  As we might expect, many of the characters are of first generation non-Anglo ethnicity and gay – outliers, misfits and desperates.  This is not an easy night of theatre; it is confronting, even threatening, in its dark truthfulness.     

Michele Lee writes plays only about women of colour.  And that’s just fine: there’s enough already about the white blokes.  Rice is about an ambitious, self-obsessed executive working for Australia’s largest rice producer, the granddaughter of a West Bengal immigrant, and a Chinese cleaner with heaps of her own business and family problems.