Compagnie Carabosse/ Melbourne International Arts Festival. Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 10-13 October 2018
Fire Gardens is everything you would hope. It is one of those unique and rare experiences that can be enjoyed with a group of people or as a pensive individual in a crowd. It is a unifying, nourishing, transcendent, personal journey.
My plus one and I wandered, happily intrigued, from sunset for at least 90 enjoyable minutes.
By Melissa Reeves after Henrik Ibsen. Belvoir. Upstairs Theatre. October 7 – November 4, 2018
Belvoir again sets an Ibsen in contemporary Australia, played out in another glass box with mics. And just like Belvoir’s Wild Duck, which even flew to success in Stockholm in Ibsen’s own homeland, this Enemy of the People translates into compelling Australian political theatre.
Catastrophe threatens the economy of a town when heavy metal pollutants force the closure of new baths.
By Nick Coyle. Griffin Theatre Company. SBW Stables Theatre (NSW). October 5 – November 17, 2018
Kimberley (Claire Lovering) is a fiery, passionate soul who does what she wants whenever she feels like it, with hilarious consequences. She leaves emotional, and more tangible, destruction in her wake as she storms through her world. Well meaning interventions by friends, policemen, and even court ordered visits to the psychologist are no match for Kimberley: her impulsiveness and shrewd insights into the inner lives of those who would try to curb her excesses are enough to defeat them all. But will she be able to conquer love with her incisive wit?
By Tennessee Williams. Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, East St Kilda VIC. 5 October – 4 November 2018
Stephen Nicolazzo and designer Eugyeene Teh are the ideal choice to give this Southern Gothic piece a heightened, stylised reality. There’s an ironic, riskily comic mode at first, but when the luminous Kate Cole takes over the story and the stage, the darkness and horror of this fable close in and dominate to the shattering conclusion.
Adapted by Terry Johnson, based on the novel by Charles Webb and the motion picture screenplay by Calder Willingham and Buck Henry. Matt Byrne Media. The Studio, Holden Street Theatres. October 10-27th, 2018.
Multi-award winning British dramatist and director Terry Johnson adapted and presented The Graduate to the stage in 2000. Based on the 1967 American romantic comedy-drama film rdirected by Mike Nicholls and written by Buck Henry and Calder Willingha, based on the 1963 novel of the same name by Charles Webb, the film has legendary status and remains in America’s top 20 significant films. The play, too, has had success on both the West End stage and on Broadway.
By Fiona Stewart. Victorian Seniors Festival. La Mama at Trades Hall, Meeting Room 1, Carlton. October 10 – 14, 2018
As part of this year’s Victorian Seniors Festival, Fiona Stewart has created Bells and Whistles, a whimsical play revolving around three sisters and their dying elderly mother. Louisa (Fiona Stewart) invites her two siblings (Annie Stanford and Felicity Sloper) to celebrate her sixtieth birthday in the old family home.
By Claude Debussy. Victorian Opera. Conductor: Richard Mills. Director: Elizabeth Hill. Palais Theatre, St Kilda. October 11 – 13, 2018
Victorian Opera has made a practice of working with educational institutions for their mutual benefit, and with Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande it was the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM). This opera requires a large orchestra, and the students did themselves proud and gained valuable experience.
Music by Jeanine Tesori, with book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire. Based on the Dream Works animation motion picture and book by William Steig. PRIMA (Pine Rivers Musical Association Incorporated) production. Directed by Miranda Selwood. Redcliffe Cultural Centre. October 5-14, 2018.
Shrek doesn’t mince words and neither will we: if you’ve got a fluffy butt, and even if you haven’t, take it to the Redcliffe Cultural Centre this weekend and you won’t regret it.
The school holidays might be over but this production of Shrek The Musical deserves the attention of everyone who has ever loved the Dream Works fairytale about an ogre who is forced to rescue a princess in a tower in order to reclaim his swamp.
Written by - Natalia Kaliada & Nicolai Khalezin (Directors of Belarus Free Theatre) with Daniel Schlusser and the cast. Melbourne International Arts Festival. Becket Theatre – Malthouse. 28 Sep – 21 Oct, 2018
With a closing inference that the nightly news is actually a panacea, Trustees speaks to the politically aware and concerned about some of the most difficult and pressing issues we are grappling with but, arguably, not really doing enough towards rectifying. It rips open personal experience and expresses desperation about the damage we have rendered and are rendering on each other. More often than not this is expressed through the use of the human body as metaphor.
By Sir Terry Pratchett. Adapted by Stephen Briggs. Brisbane Arts Theatre. Directed by Sally Daly. Oct 6 – Nov 3, 2018.
In this Discworld, the formation of the Thieves and Assassins Guilds has made The City Watch almost redundant - no more than a gang of thugs and bullies. However, our attention is mainly focused on the Night Watch which was reduced to a handful of undesirables and thieves who have very little to do. This changes when Carrot, with a simple and naïve vision of justice, joins the watch team and also when the Patrician orders that new recruits from ethnic minorities can join.
