Reviews

Image (above): Jasmine Prasser as Mae, Alex O’Connell as Henry, and George Oates as Lloyd sit around the table.

Salad Days Collective’s production of Maria Irene Fornes’ MUD at PIP Theatre is an unapologetically raw, hauntingly beautiful portrayal of poverty, power, and longing for freedom — and it’s hard to shake even after the final blackout.

There have been a number of plays about the dubiously staged productions by the ladies of the fictitious Farndale  Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen’s Dramatic Society, and they have made a spectacle of themselves yet again.  That, of course, is the reason the audience was there in such good numbers on opening night. Initially, it seemed to be no more than a shambolic rehearsal with calls for lines, the right props and so on but finally the ladies improved their skills by adding deaths and murders within the castle walls.

Milky Way Productions’ Lizzie is described as a musical but might better be described as Rock Opera come Rock Concert. Performed on a reduced stage space with the band prominent and visible, this almost sung through show is very music focused. Lizzie is the story of Lizzie Borden, famously accused and acquitted of the brutal axe murder of her father and stepmother.

The platypus is a semiaquatic, venomous, egg-laying mammal whose first presentation to European scientists at the turn of the 19th century was judged to be several animals sewn together. It defied a clean categorisation and has its own genus – a genre, if you like, of the animal kingdom. Francis Greenslade’s first original play of the same name attempts to do the same in the performing arts kingdom, where a domestic drama spirals downwards across many, many genres stitched together.