Reviews

True West

By Sam Shepard. The Hidden Theatre, New Town, Tasmania. Jacob Golding and Sam Tooker (Producers). Penny MacDonald (Director). Jacob Golding (Sound Design). Jacob Golding and Nathan Golding (Set Design). 15-25 September 2022

This classic work by Sam Shepard was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for good reason. It still has something to say to modern audiences about the way in which we choose to live, our colonising aspirations, rivalries and definition of success. Whilst this American play ostensibly examines the true nature of the (wild) west, it can also be understood as speaking to the way modern humans choose to live in harmony with or to the exclusion of nature.  This exploration of the American Dream is recognisable to Australians, whose history of invasion and destruction is similar.

What Is The Matter With Mary Jane?

By Wendy Harmer. Freefall Productions. Holden Street Theatres, Adelaide. 14 - 24 Sept 2022

Awarded actor Stefani Rossi continues to blaze a trail demonstrating how energy, focus and impeccable timing and perfect habitation of the performance space can make your heart break one minute and smile with delight at the lightning fast quips, the next.

Tilt (Program 2)

WAAPA Third Year Performance Making. The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, WA. September 14-17, 2022

Tilt (Program 2) is the second of two sub-seasons of student written, designed and acted performances from WAAPA’s Third Year Bachelor of Performing Arts Students. An evening of six short plays, which vary in genre and style, its sheer variety means there is something to appeal to everyone.

In The Heights

Words & Music: Lin-Manuel Miranda. Book: Quiara Alegria Hudes. OCPAC. Director/Set Design: Melanie Xavier, Musical Director: Benjamin Samuel, Choreographer: Joel Anderson, Lighting Designer: Peter Anesbury, Sound Designer: Marcello Lo Ricco. Memorial Great Hall, Kew, Victoria. September 16 - 23, 2022.

Long before the phenomenon of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's lesser-known musical In The Heights had been a solid success.  Playing over 1,200 performances on Broadway, it was nominated for fourteen Tony Awards, winning four including Best Musical and Choreography.  In The Heights explores the lives of three generations of immigrants dwelling in the bustling neighbourhood of Washington Heights over the course of three days. The Tony winning score features hip-hop, salsa, merengue and soul music.  

Circonoclasm: A Circus Art-Heist

NICA. Directed by David Woods. Presented by NICA. National Circus Centre, 39 – 59 Green Street, Prahran. 14 –17 September 2022.

This delightful performance not only showcases the talent of second year NICA students but strings together the magnificent performance in a clever witty and politically inspired commentary on the state of the Arts.

The Pajama Game

Book by George Abbott and Richard Bissell. Music and Lyrics by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross. WAAPA Musical Theatre. Directed by Cameron Mitchell. The Roundhouse Theatre, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, WA. Sep 9-15, 2022

WAAPA's 2022 Graduates of Musical Theatre’s final production is a sold-out season of The Pajama Game, a joyous production that is delighting audiences. 

Fires in the Mirror

By Anna Deavere Smith. WAAPA Third Year Acting. Directed by Charles Allen. Studio Underground, State Theatre Center of Western Australia, Perth WA. Sep 8-14, 2022

Performed by WAAPA Third Year Acting Students, and designed, built and crewed by WAAPA Production and Design students, Fires in the Mirror, Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities was written by Anna Deavere Smith, an African American playwright actress and professor in 1992 as a response to the Crown Heights Riots of August 1991 and its aftermath. 

Hänsel and Gretel

By Engelbert Humperdinck and Adelheid Wette. WAAPA Classical Voice Students. Directed by Rachel McDonald with Musical Direction by Jessica Gethin. Geoff Gibbs Theatre, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, WA. Sep 9-15, 2022

This dark Märchenoper or fairy-tale opera is presented by WAAPA Classical Voice Students and the WAAPA Symphony Orchestra and designed, constructed, and crewed by WAAPA Production and Design students.

One of the interesting aspects of this opera, written in the late 1800s and featuring a sibling pair, is that it was composed by Engelbert Humperdinck with the libretto written by his sister Adelheid Wette. This production has a strong sense of family in many senses of the word.

Our Country’s Good.

By Timberlake Wertenbaker. Canberra Repertory Society, directed by Karen Vickery, assisted by Liz de Toth. Canberra Repertory Theatre, Acton. 8 to 24 September 2022.

Adapted from Tom Keneally’s novel The Playmaker, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good boldly illustrates the harshness inherent in convict life in the inhospitable penal colony for which Governor Arthur Phillip was responsible at Botany Bay.  It also depicts, however fictionally, the governor’s ideal of having the penal settlement transform his prisoners into good citizens ready for egalitarian society rather than merely brutalise them.


School of Rock

Based on the Paramount movie written by Mike White. Book by Julian Fellowes. Lyrics by Glenn Slater. Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Toowoomba Choral Society. Empire Theatres Toowoomba. September 9 – 11, 2022.

When Andrew Lloyd Webber and Julian Fellowes team up, the results of this ultra-conservative British duo, surprisingly, rock. 

The Next Generation School of Rock: The Musical, based on the 2003 comedy starring Jack Black, was embraced wholeheartedly by the Toowoomba Choral Society and hit all the right notes with its enthusiastic audience.

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