Reviews

Putting it Together first saw the light of day as a Stephen Sondheim song review, strung together by a paper-thin plot, in a 1993 Off-Broadway production with Julie Andrews, who was making her return to the stage. Julia McKenzie followed with a London outing and then Carol Burnett took it to Broadway in 1999. The songs are fine but as a show it depends on the talent of the performers.

Ipswich Little Theatre chose to mount it as their first ever musical, an ambitious choice indeed for a theatre group whose audiences are most comfortable with farce and thrillers.

Three River Theatre presented the premiere of a new work written by Caitlin Richardson at the Earl Arts Centre in Launceston in November 2015, a psycho-drama/historical play with a big theme. Disclosed is an investigation into the effects of isolation on those in captivity, in the new form of prison where ideas about the exercise of power were appearing in the colony of Tasmania and around the world. Physical violence was being replaced with more subliminal methods of bureaucratic control.

Classical ballet is surely desperate for a new picture book.  The Australian Ballet’s new The Sleeping Beauty, the first full production choreographed by its long-term artistic director David McAllister, is the company’s fourth version. 

After showing in Melbourne and Perth, it has just opened in Sydney.  And like so many re-workings around the world, this Sleeping Beauty closely honours the original Marius Petipa choreography so acclaimed back in the Tsarist days of 1890. 

The Australian premiere of Silhouette, a thriller by Simon Brett, is to be Fred Petersen's swan-song as a director and this well-structured, well-performed play makes a good farewell piece.

Interestingly structured, with t Act II set chronologically immediately before Act I, the events of the murder at the centre of the play are gradually revealed.