Reviews

SKIN is an inter-active promenade production from Malaysia that effectively takes one into the nightmare world of human trafficking. As is stated by the creators in the program, Malaysia currently hosts approximately 90,000 refugees, whom exist in a state of transit having no international legal standing. What this production successfully achieves is an ‘experience’ that is informative as much as it is alienating. It is a journey that one takes sometimes with the other attendees/participants and at other times as an individual.

Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera like no other. Written by the American composer Virgil Thomson to a libretto by Gertrude Stein, the words are generally nonsense, with repetitive phrases and no discernible plot. The Stream of Consciousness school was popular in this era.

However, this did not matter.

Having very recently reviewed Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good, in which some of the convict characters in an early Australian penal colony attempt to rehearse George Farquhar’s play The Recruiting Officer, this week I reviewed The Recruiting Officer in its own right.

Blackout Theatre Co's production of Jonathon Larson's musical Rent is a real tribute to the shows themes of Love, Adversity and Community.

Twenty years after the Off Broadway Premiere, Director Jordan Anderson and his cast and crew have produced a real in-your-face and at times very moving night of theatre.

The cast of 36 (unusually large for this show) is strong vocally when they are all on stage together. The principal cast, together, form a very believable group of friends, though individually struggling with nerves and harmonies on opening night.