Reviews

The Botanical Gardens is a fabulous outdoor space that the Australian Shakespeare Company have beautifully carved out for their often-vibrant productions. This show takes a detour from their usual work and focuses on the Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The bad acting, the ridiculous rivalries and the slapstick humour that characterise the four tradesmen are brought to life on a large scale, and their very questionable theatrical talents are all playfully explored in one big production.

Image: Rose Adams and Brooke Lee.

When Niv (Dushan Philips) is instructed by his brother Sai (Kaivu Suvarna) to use the term “ministers for barking” as the new term for the word ‘dogs’ (as an exercise in adopting new more politically correct terminology) the play exhibits one of its typically amusing and simultaneously thought-provoking pieces of dialogue. In this very insightful play woke politics comes under as much fire as the commonplace assumption of white privilege. 

Did you know that the Army set up libraries in Vietnam? Or that there were civilian women employed to try to cheer young soldiers by just talking to them? Or that a rising young African-American female military strategist had predicted that the Tet Offensive was imminent? Or that when she tried desperately to convince her superiors, they ignored her? These are stories full of confusion, horror, political awakening and also a surprising amount of warmth and humour—you can feel the heart poured into Theatre Travels’ In Their Footsteps.

A 17th century Parisian salon is the place to be to get the real truths behind what we think we know about fairy tales. Madame d’Aulnoy hosts a bevy of familiar villains and victims who offer their perspectives through song.

Eliane Morel takes on every character, changing costume and accent along with the persona of the likes of an Ugly Sister, Sleeping Beauty, and the Wolf, with great musical and comedic support on the harpsicord and piano from Daryl Wallis.