Reviews

night sweat, written and performed by Michelle McCowage was of interest to me as I have always had difficulties in the sleep realm. The show was nominated for Best Theatre and Best Emerging Artist last year at Melbourne Fringe and it was remounted for a three-night season at the Motley Bauhaus. The blurb describes the show as a seamless interplay of physical theatre, improvisation and poetic storytelling, transporting audiences into the murky farrago between awake and asleep.

The rarely performed Cymbeline is a melodrama – a tale of treachery, betrayal, sibling rivalry, deception, revenge, guilt and innocence, love, loyalty and forgiveness, murder, misogyny, peerless virtue, cross-dressing, and rapid movement – and warfare - between ancient Britain and Rome.  Some have called it a comedy.  Others a romance.  (There are elements of both.)  It has been loved by some and derided by others.  Dr Samuel Johnson remarked that, ‘This play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues, and some pleasing scenes, but t

Monash University Student Theatre (MUST) in collaboration with Bloomshed have produced a very fine and facetious adaptation of Gogol’s iconic text. Placing the themes and ideas in an Australian context is already a strong political statement and suggests an absurd decline in the contemporary political and economic landscape. The reference to the scandalous behaviour of big supermarket giants and likening their actions to Gogol’s very sardonic and jaded vision of Russian bureaucracy is ingenious.

Joel Bray is a talented actor, dancer and writer who has collaborated with Peter Paltos and Emma Valente to produce a very personal and penetrative insight into his experience as a gay man in a Pentecostal church. His queer identity and religious faith are inevitably two incompatible worlds. This high spirited and humorous account of his experience of discovering just how at odds these two worlds are, is often very poignant.