Reviews

The Great American Songbook has never been safer than in the hands of entertainer Michael Feinstein. Affectionately called the ambassador of this genre, he has made it his life’s work to share globally these unique decades in musical composition and performance.

Showcasing composers and lyricists such as George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Sammy Cahn and Bart Howard, Feinstein exudes love and respect for his contemporaries and one-time friends.

Absorbed in Adelaide Repertory Theatre’s current production of Sam Bobrick’s The Psychic I found myself back in my teens and remembering how much I had loved the wonderful and very funny characters in the Damon Runyon fictional stories that my father introduced to me. Full of detailed imagery about the hustlers and gangsters of the big cities of prohibition-era America, the characters were larger-than-life, with their distinctive vernacular style being a signature part of the writing.

A century after its origin as a John Buchan novel and eight decades after Hitchcock’s adapation to film, The 39 Steps has, with Patrick Barlow’s stage adaptation, metamophosed from a tense thriller into a period comedy adventure of timeless appeal.

Irine Vela, Artistic Director of Outer Urban Projects, works with young rappers, singers and beat boxers in the outer suburbs of northern Melbourne.  She remembered a play from Greek antiquity, The Frogs by Aristophanes.  It gave her an idea.  In The Frogs, Dionysus, as Ms Vela puts it in her program note, is ‘frustrated with the diminishing community spirit, culture and literature of Athens and decides to undertake a journey to the Underworld to find [poet and dramatist] Euripides… to bring him back life with the hope that his words can inspire