Reviews

It’s a hot early summer Sydney evening and from Circular Quay to Tubowgule – Bennelong Point – everything’s abuzz. Friends are meeting, eating, celebrating. Visitors are taking photos. Excited fans sit outside on the steps the Opera House, the white sails hovering above them as they wait for the Crowded House concert to begin. Devotees make their way to one of the five venues inside. The ballet in the Joan Sutherland Theatre. A play in the Drama Theatre. Magic in the Playhouse.

Melbourne Shakespeare Company has long been curating an image of thoughtful, playful and highly accessible music inspired performances of Shakespeare plays. Over time this oeuvre has increasingly paid off, and in this production of Twelfth Night it has reached a truly impressive zenith. The music remains in the style of a capella and the songs remain excellent choices to highlight the emotions of the characters and advance and clarify the narrative.

Peter Carey’s novel Jack Maggs reimagines Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations through more modern sensibilities and the viewpoint of the ex-convict rather than the child.  Dickens’s fearsome Abel Magwitch has become Jack Maggs, and the child Pip has become Henry Phipps.  Samuel Adamson’s adaptation of the novel into a play cleverly frames it within an 1879 stage production that presents the “true story” of the events of 1837.  This allowed the framing play’s narrator intermittent engagement with the (1879) fictitiou

Derek Deane’s The Lady of the Camellias, performed by Shanghai Ballet at QPAC’s Lyric Theatre, was an unforgettable portrayal of love, sacrifice, and redemption, told through breathtaking dance and exquisite artistry. Based on Alexandre Dumas fils’ celebrated novel, this production seamlessly wove the elegance of classical ballet with the raw emotion of its timeless story.