Reviews

Emma Sproule is one of the most innovative directors in the world of community theatre, and nowhere is this more apparent than in Dionysus’ new production of arguably the Bard’s greatest tragedy.

Quick Death isn’t about Death and Slow Love is not about Love.  Well, not exactly.  This pair of clever one-act plays present images, catchphrases, and, yes, wittily chosen clichés that represent death and love, chiefly in cinema, but also in literature, and therefore, possibly, in our easily influenced imaginations.  Much laughter springs from the audience’s recognition of these tropes – but the underlying intention is deadly serious.  Richard Murphet is demonstrating for us how these representations, beguiling as they

With the hundredth anniversary of Gallipoli this year, there are none of us left to even give a second thought on how Australian Society suffered and survived during, and in the follow up to World War 1. It is left to playwrights, like Kevin Summers, to prick our consciences (and our memories) by reaching us emotionally through drama. Patient 12 is not an easy play to perform or watch. A young soldier, with his face blown off, is in a Melbourne Repat hospital and is going to die. There is no way to identify him except for an initial tattooed on his chest.

Christopher Marlowe’s account of Edward II of England condenses the twenty turbulent years of his reign into an exposé of love and lust, politics and power.

Fie on love that,

Hatchet death and hate.’Kent: Scene Act V, Sc iv

Director Terry Karabelas: “Marlowe explores how excess and passion always lead to catastrophe and destruction. (It is) an historical tragedy…that transcends time and speaks to our contemporary world where the personal is political and the political is always driven by the personal”.