Reviews

Western Arts Theatre (WAT) is a relatively new group operating in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Apart from Altona and Williamstown, who are much further south, there are no other music theatre groups in the area, so they are filling a great need.

I hadn’t attended the theatre at Maribyrnong College before, but found it to be a nice intimate theatre. The lack of an orchestra pit was overcome by having the band in an adjacent room, but I detected no problems with this. The band played well and there were few problems of the balance with the singers.

Rehabilitation or the gallows? When dealing with serious felons, it’s a question pondered by far more civilised and recent societies than that of early Australian penal colonies.

Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 play Our Country’s Good is set in Governor Arthur Philip’s penal colony and poses the execution vs rehabilitation dilemma through a familiar theatrical device, a play within a play.

If you love a good farce, especially one that’s done well, then this production of Boeing Boeing will be just your ticket - and despite the fact that the plot might seem  politically incorrect, it’s not impossible that you’ll get lots of laughs.

Goldsmith’s classic comedy, commissioned to revive a dying genre and completed in 1771, takes a couple of love matches and throws in their path obstacles arising chiefly from the human need to be sure of the suitor’s suitability.  In this universality of motives, it translates successfully as comedy for modern audiences.  Relying less on linguistic cleverness than on straightforward deceits of universal application, the tale leads seemingly inexorably to disaster and disownment before resolving with a satisfying twist.