Reviews

After visiting 29 countries, Priscilla’s bus has at last called in to Brisbane on the final leg of its current 10th anniversary tour, and if last night’s reaction is anything to go by it’s a gigantic hit. The first time it’s ever played Brisbane, this exuberant jukebox-musical is a high-camp, raunchy and glittering treat.

Little Match Productions, a Brisbane independent theatre company, has devised a delightful take on the Edward Lear poem that has been fascinating children for more than a century. The title characters are both female, so this production’s interpretation as a tale of unlikely friendship and love has an underlying subtext of diversity and acceptance. The theme continues as the lead pair meet a series of strange animal characters that test their preconceptions on their run-away adventure together.

This play is the dramatisation of the story of the late ABC PM Radio Host, Mark Colvin and the selfless donation of a replacement kidney by a British woman who only knew him via the airwaves and social media. 

Spanning many years, the story starts in London during the last decade, at the height of the phone-tapping scandal that rocked the print media world and Rupert Murdoch’s News Of The World.

Before last night, if you had asked me if I would enjoy a night out listening to four monologues, I may well have yawned and politely declined. State Theatre Company South Australia’s Belvoir production of Faith Healer, with its powerful, seemingly simple and beautifully staged storytelling has changed all that.