Reviews

Go Back for Murder

By Agatha Christie. Hobart Repertory Theatre Company. Scot Hunt (Director). The Playhouse Hobart. June 10 – 25, 2022

Director Scott Hunt described this play as a logistical nightmare. For so many reasons, there would have been cause for confusion in the mounting of this production. As well as the complexity of the script, there is the double cast and frequent changes of scene.

30 Something

Catherine Alcorn & Phil Scott. Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2022. Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. March 10-12, 2022

It’s December 31st 1939 and we are at the Club Corona in Kings Cross watching the last act before midnight and the dawn of the naughty forties.

It’s a great premise which largely delivers in 30 Something. Musical maestro Phil Scott has taken 30s and 40s songs from the pens of Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and added work from contemporary artists including Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga and Coolio.

Terrain

Bangarra Dance Company. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. 9 – 25 June, 2022

The wide, open stage of the Drama Theatre is Kati Thanda (Lake Eyre). Lightning flashes across a stark white stage and thunder crashes and echoes invoking this vast, changing  landscape of desert and salt pans that are magically transformed by the run-off of monsoon rains. Set designer Jacob Nash and lighting designer Karen Norris come together to recreate the dramatic vagaries and colours of this place that has been the home of the Arabunna people for thousands of years.

Paul Grabowsky & Andrea Lam

Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Presented by Musica Viva Australia. Touring 11 to 25 June 2022

Australia’s world-renowned pianist Andrea Lam has been based in New York for two decades. But she is back in Australia and has been enlisted by Musica Viva for the first time. A self-confessed keen collaborator, Andrea performs Bach’s Goldberg Variations in an unusual classical and jazz fusion concert with the award-winning Paul Grabowsky. Allegedly, the Variations were written by Bach for fellow composer and harpsichordist JG Goldberg to play for his sponsor, Count Kaiserling, during the Count’s bouts of insomnia.

Li’s Choice: Celebrating a Decade of Directorship

Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), Brisbane. 10 to 25 June 2022

Image: Kohei Iwamoto - Elite Syncopations

Calendar Girls

By Tim Firth. Shoebox Theatre Company. Directed by Terry Brady. Armitage Centre, Toowoomba. 9-12 June 2022

The story of Calendar Girls is a winning formula: a group of middle-aged women overcoming the odds and going starkers for a charity calendar. 

The true story that inspired the 2003 film by British screenwriter Tim Firth has been smoothly adapted by the author for the stage, and is once again making audiences chuckle, weep and connect with its colourful characters, poignant storyline and caustic repartee.

Caress/Ache

By Suzie Miller. WAAPA 3rd Year Acting Students. Directed by Sandie Eldridge. The Roundhouse Theatre, WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, WA. June 9-15, 2021

Caress/Ache is a touching, beautifully acted piece from WAAPA’s 3rd Year Acting Students, superbly designed built and crewed by WAAPA Production and Design students. A moving production that was sadly under-attended on opening night.

Playwright Suzie Miller wrote Caress/Ache in response to the execution of Van Tuong Nguyen in Singapore in 2005, inspired by the cruelty not only of the execution, but the cruel order not to allow his mother to hug him before his death sentence was carried out. This play explores the sense of touch.

Emerald City.

By David Williamson. Free-Rain Theatre. Directed by Anne Somes. The Hub, Kingston, ACT. 8–25 June 2022.

Already a successful screenwriter, Colin (Isaac Reilly) craves greater creative control of producing screenplays, and to facilitate this has dragged his wife, Kate (Victoria Tyrrell Dixon), and their three children from Melbourne to Sydney, where the action is.

Becoming Eliza

Starring Anna O’Byrne. Playhouse Sydney Opera House. June 9 – 12, 2022, then Ukaria, Adelaide June 19.

Eliza Doolittle is famously transformed in the play Pygmalion from a cockney Covent Garden flower seller into the toast of English high society.

In the case of Anna O’Byrne, her transformation was from playing second violin in a high school production of My Fair Lady, listening to the tapping feet of her sister in the lead role on the stage above her head, to scoring the part of Eliza, under the direction of Dame Julie Andrews.

Ken’s Quest

Adapted by Adam Cass from the novel by Cher Chidzey. Directed by Adam Cass. La Mama HQ, Faraday Street, Carlton. 8 – 19 June, 2022.

Ken (James Lau) is in Melbourne from Shanghai.  He’s an engineer, a widower with a disabled children back in China, and he’s possibly his own worst enemy.  His quest is to get a residence visa – and that means, of course, getting his qualifications recognised and bringing his family to Australia.  It’s that or go back to Shanghai.  And now time is running out: his deadline is 190 days, and the clock is ticking… 

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