Reviews

Pop the champagne and indulge in a fun-filled evening of entertainment in one of the first offerings in this year’s Brisbane Festival. But first, a word of warning: for audiences enticed by the fabulous Spiegeltent venue with its family-friendly atmosphere, Blanc de Blanc Encore is not a family show: there is some nudity and risqué humour from the get-go. Second word of warning: despite the show’s glitzy billboards and promise of high-class ‘vintage French flair’, the show is not the Moulin Rouge.

Mike Bartlett’s hit play revolves around a country house of characters whose stories are slowly revealed across four acts, against the undertow theme of a post-Brexit Britain.

London businesswomen Audrey, with her reluctant daughter, Zara (Rhiaan Marquez)  and happily ineffectual second husband (Charles Mayer), has big plans to restore the old house and its once magnificent gardens – especially when the ashes of her soldier son are buried there, along with past war dead.

Australian playwrights have provided leading voices in the development of Australia’s cultural

identity, and this year Flinders University Drama Centre’s nine graduating actors have, under the direction of renowned Australian Director, Wayne Harrison AM, examined the impact of these works with an anthology performance of landmark coming-of-age stories in Australian theatre in a purpose written piece called Coming of Age in Australia.

Like a Yum Cha with every possible flavour on offer, this comedy is a feast which left the audience with their bellies full of laughs.

Walking into the brilliant set designed by Nick Fry, we were immediately transported into a Chinese restaurant that felt so authentic you almost taste the prawn cracker.