Reviews

Ruddigore or the Witch’s Curse (1887) was Gilbert and Sullivan’s tenth collaboration and coming after the gigantic success of The Mikado it fared badly with the critics and was relegated to the rarely performed in their repertoire.

Australia hasn’t seen it for twenty years, so this new Opera Q production by Lindy Hume is a welcome revival. The piece trades in Victorian-era cloak-and-dagger melodrama with a delightful burlesque edge which Hume captured in some inventive Monty Python-esque sets by Richard Roberts.

First time playwright Disapol Savetsila brings his own immigrant experience to this tale of newly arrived Thais searching for a place an Aussie country town.  Cooking is their offering, their passport to new home and community, but sadly no one comes to the new restaurant.

Almost entombed in David Fleischer’s airless, grey concrete backroom, is a young married couple (Monica Sayers and Kenneth Moraleda) struggling with sickness and displacement, young Ben and his mother (an exasperated Gabrielle Chan as the bossy maître de with no customers). 

Mordialloc Theatre Company always brings the goods to the Mornington Peninsula theatrical scene and Australia Day has certainly combined with all their tremendous work to date.

The play, written by Jonathan Biggins (an all-rounder performer, writer, and director in his own right), attempts to show what its like to sneak a peek into the conflict that surrounds the significance and substance of our National public holiday.

By a Thread is the name of the piece and also describes most of the action - the performers spend much of the night hanging by a thread, albeit a chunky one. They climb, swing balance, slide, catch, pull, twist and caress a single piece of rope to the delight (and gasps) of the audience.