Reviews

The Melbourne Fringe Festival is always looking for quirky shows in unusual venues. This BK Opera delivered.

Set on the fourth floor of the Carlton Club, this one acter for one character was played out in four different rooms with four different sopranos. The rooms and audience were very small, so only an amateur group could have attempted this.

This must be the most tawdry drag show in town but also the funniest thanks to Ross Waghorn’s turn as Zaza/Albin. A performer who has street cred in ‘Drag’ (he frequently works as his alter-ego Wanda DParke), he commands the stage and with his smart delivery and ad-libs he finds a few more laughs than are on the page in Harvey Fierstein’s bubbly script. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a ‘Drag Queen’ play the role and it was a revelation.

The story of an unlikely group of Yorkshire women who pose nude for a calendar in an effort to raise money for cancer research challenges many conventional notions about nudity and decorum. This heart-warming story is big on sentimentality and tempered with tasteful and good-natured humour.

Set in 19th century France, Les Misérables is based on the novel of the same name by French poet and novelist Victor Hugo. Transformed in 1980 into the musical we know today, with music by Claude-Michel Schonberg and English lyrics by Herbert Kreuzer, it has been on a stage somewhere in the world ever since.