Reviews

As I have reported in previous reviews, this remarkable company of teenagers create every aspect of their production.

Their latest offering is The Toymakers; set in a shanty town during the great depression in New York City. While one immediately thinks of Annie: that is where the similarity ends. The first act was a little slow while the scene and plot were established, but once that was out of the way, the show settled down to and intriguing piece of theatre.

What the company lacked in expensive trappings they more than made up for in enthusiasm and energy.

Nobody Owns the Moon is a World Premiere production by Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, based on the book of the same name by Tohby Riddle. A poignant and moving new work, it is perhaps the last new work to feature the talents of co-creator Noriko Nishimoto, who died earlier this year.

Darker in theme, subject matter and design than most pieces for young people, Nobody Owns the Moon touches on themes of loneliness, homelessness and greed, but is ultimately joyful and hopeful.

Western Arts Theatre (WAT) is a relatively new group operating in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Apart from Altona and Williamstown, who are much further south, there are no other music theatre groups in the area, so they are filling a great need.

I hadn’t attended the theatre at Maribyrnong College before, but found it to be a nice intimate theatre. The lack of an orchestra pit was overcome by having the band in an adjacent room, but I detected no problems with this. The band played well and there were few problems of the balance with the singers.

Rehabilitation or the gallows? When dealing with serious felons, it’s a question pondered by far more civilised and recent societies than that of early Australian penal colonies.

Timberlake Wertenbaker’s 1988 play Our Country’s Good is set in Governor Arthur Philip’s penal colony and poses the execution vs rehabilitation dilemma through a familiar theatrical device, a play within a play.