Reviews

She Wrote the Letter

By Kieran Carroll. Directed by Cathy Hunt. St Martins Theatre, 28 St Martins Lane, South Yarra, Melbourne. 5-10 April, 2022.

Based on a true story, this play recounts the long-term friendship between performer Tania McNaughton and Ute Dahike. Their friendship spans decades and media platforms. They started out as teenage pen friends in two remote and distant places: Tania in New Zealand and Ute in East Germany.

Lawrence Mooney – Beauty

Written & Performed by Lawrence Mooney. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Atheneum Theatre 2. 8 – 10 April 2022. (Other venues & dates to follow)

At one point in his stand-up routine, Lawrence Mooney says, ‘Isn’t it great to discriminate – you just have to pick your minority.’  Listening to his audience, he picks right.  He runs the gamut: sexist jokes, racist jokes, penis, pudenda, and arsehole jokes, mocking disability jokes, graphically obscene descriptions of dicks (circumcised or not), arseholes (hairy or not), and Gladys Berejiklian’s appearance and love life.  Having a quick one off the wrist while watching Nigella Lawson. 

Dear Ida

Created & directed by Lisa Petty. La Mama Courthouse. 5 – 10 April 2022

A trip back to the dance halls of WWII Australia – the good times and the not so good.  The big band sound, the waltz, the foxtrot, the quickstep, the Gypsy Tap…  Women’s work in factories, laundries, homes.  Dressing up for a bit of fun on a Saturday night.  The letters from faraway places: ‘Dear Ida… Of course, I can’t say where we are…’  In the newspapers, the casualty lists.  The priest delivering the telegrams.  The wowsers.  The ridiculous claims of no alcohol, and no sex at the dances

In Blood

By Zachary Kazepis. La Mama HQ. April 5 – 10, 2022.

A one man show performed, devised, and written by Zachary Kazepis, In Blood is a confessional noirish tale set in a small rural town, about an innocent working class, twenty-one-year-old man, who once had dreams of breaking free from his origins, so he could be “somebody or someone”.

The Velveteen Rabbit

By Margery Williams, adapted by Greg Lissaman. Directed by Phillip Mitchell. Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, 1 Short St, Fremantle, WA. April 4-23, 2022

The Velveteen Rabbit is somewhat of a stalwart for Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, but the latest incarnation feels particularly poignant given the current pandemic. The original book, which features a young child, very ill, was written in 1922, in the wake of the Spanish Flu Pandemic – although the child has scarlet fever, which probably harks to the British Scarlet Fever epidemic of Margery Williams’ childhood.

Hard Quiz Live

Quizmaster Tom Gleeson. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Melbourne Town Hall. 1 – 9 April 2022 (later in Sydney)

Based on the very popular ABCTV quiz show, Hard Quiz Live packs out the big room at the Melbourne Town Hall.  On my evening, the audience queue to get in stretches down Collins Street from the side entrance, and around the corner into Swanston Street for three hundred metres. Quizmaster Tom Gleeson, whose schtick is cruel, nasty, and politically incorrect putdowns, and scurrilous or snide remarks on his rivals, comes out onto the stage – and he revels in having no cameras, and a huge live audience. 

Anna Karenina

The Australian Ballet and Joffrey Ballet. Choreography by Yuri Possokhov. Composer Ilya Demutsky. Libretto by Valeriy Pecheykin based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy. April 5 – 23, 2022

International choreographer Yuri Possokhov and his Russian composer Ilya Demutsky have created a beautifully dark, modern retelling of Tolstoy’s great classic. 

So unrelenting is its narrative, so psychological its tone, that these dancers also must be fine actors. Robyn Hendricks as Anna Karenina, who sacrifices all for a passion which doesn’t last, and Callum Linnane as her remorseful lover, Vronsky, excel at both. 

She-Nanigans

By Chido Mwat. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The Motley Bauhaus Black Box, Carlton. 4 – 10 April 2022

Chido Mwat came to Australia from Zimbabwe in 2015 to study medicine. She’s now a junior doctor with Western Health.  But what happened on the way through – from then to now?  Studying, of course, but part-time jobs and – because she knew there were stories to tell – learning improv, sketch comedy and film making.  But there were also the doubts, fears, racist discrimination, stupid questions, and assumptions suffered by many immigrants.

Mel & Sam SHIT-WRECKED

Written, choreographed & performed by Mel O’Brien & Samantha Andrew. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The Toff in Town. 31 March – 10 April 2022

Last time we saw Mel O’Brien and Samantha Andrew they were being primary schoolgirls in their terrific, fast-moving, hilarious, and award-winning No Hat, No Play!  The Cabaret. 

What SHIT-WRECKED has in common with No Hat – apart from acid wit, original music, and in-sync-but-faux-desperate choreography – is that it’s a series of sketches rendered as songs, with dancing that is as expressive as the words – and a kind of grumpy resentment of authority and of life’s disappointments in general. 

Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins & Mahagonny Songspiel

Red Line Productions. Directed By Constantine Costi. Old Fitz Theatre, NSW. March 31 - April 23, 2022

My jaw dropped when I entered the theatre – what, 17 musicians in this tiny space? I read that in the promotional material but assumed it was a joke – how does an independent theatre manage such an extravaganza?

Up the road the Hayes Theatre typically squeezes a handful of players in their 111-seat theatre – but the old Fitz fits just 58. So, this is like trying to break the world record for fitting the most people into a Mini Minor. 

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