Reviews

Fighting is not an easy play to watch, but it’s important that we do! Fighting is about bipolar, a mental illness that few people understand – apart from those who suffer from it. Playwright Xavier Coy is one of those people. He wrote the play shortly after being diagnosed. “The play is raw,” he says, “and by far the most personal I have written. I had to write it that way to … help the audience understand that we are not crazy.”

At Qtopia in the heart of Sydney’s Darlinghurst queer stories across different cultures, wars and national identities are mushrooming.

James Elazzi’s new play begins in a regional town of Lebanon with fresh love between a tomato farmer, Pierre (Antony Makhlouf), and forthright young welder, Samir (Saro Lepejian), beautifully etched in short scenes from casual touch to passion.  The problem is Pierre’s widowed mother Zienab (Deborah Galanos) who insists he settle a huge debt by marrying the neighbour’s daughter, Layla (Nicole Chamoun). 

Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tale The Little Mermaid was written 188 years ago! Like many of his stories, it ends sadly. Fortunately, as we all know, Disney’s 2007 musical interpretation does not! There the little mermaid’s dreams of wanting to venture beyond the shore not only come true, but she finds her prince, her voice is restored, the wicked sea witch disappears – and it’s all told in songs that have become “part of this world”.

Ophelia Thinks Harder is a feminist re-interpretation of Hamlet which could be described as an ideological treatise on the subjugation of women. Whilst using Hamlet as her model, playwright Jean Betts cleverly incorporates familiar lines from other Shakespearean works as a not-so-gentle reminder that productions of his plays have been perpetuating the denigration of women for over 500 years.