Reviews

To quote the text, this may be nonsense, but it’s ‘clever nonsense’.  Of course, Travesties is not nonsense at all.  In an absurdist, witty, erudite and polemical fashion Tom Stoppard generates fast, funny and articulate debate among his characters about war, art and revolution – and, in passing, how we wish we could rewrite our own past.  A serious play with a light, light touch.

Burlesque. As an art-form, it's been around a very long time. Hundreds of years, in fact. But in relatively modern times, people have come to think of it as just another word for a 'strip show'. 

However, in the early days it was a showcase for parody, satire and biting social commentary. 

In all my years of theatregoing, despite visiting London many times, I have never seen The Mousetrap. That oversight has now been rectified by Sharon White’s excellent realisation of this world-famous Agatha Christie whodunit for St Luke’s Theatre Society. Since it opened in 1952 the play has become the longest continuously running play in history. Christie wrote it in one week and it was first presented as a twenty-minute BBC radio play called Three Blind Mice in 1947.

Opera Queensland’s Artistic Director Patrick Nolan tell us in his notes that “this is the first new production of Tosca presented in Australia for many years”, and what a triumph it was. His idea to re-imagine Puccini’s moody, melodramatic masterpiece in terrorist-torn Italy of the 70s paid off handsomely with some exemplary vocals, emotion-charged acting, a gorgeous orchestral realisation of the score, and all played out on a striking modernist two-level set.