Reviews

Queensland Theatre’s Artistic Director, Sam Strong, is at the helm of this hugely successful stage version of the Aussie classic Storm Boy. He has brought together a highly skilled team where everyone has played their part in forging an exhilarating visual theatre experience. The magical set design by Anna Cordingley – sand dunes and beach shacks – brings to life the Coorong setting, bolstered by stunning projections and drone images from Justin Harrison, with sparkling lighting by Matt Scott.

Director Tyran Parke (fresh from directing Barnum – The Circus Musical) is a huge devotee of the work of Stephen Sondheim and has both performed in and directed many concerts and musicals featuring the king of Broadway's music and lyrics. 

The vision for this intimate showcase was to help the audience see how our own humanity prevents us from achieving connection. This vision was achieved with great success by Mr Parke, Producer Caitlin Spears and Musical Director Stephen Gray as part of the newly formed Spears Entertainment production company. 

Directed by Nick Fagan, The University of Adelaide Theatre Guild’s performance of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem begins gently and somewhat serenely with an angelic voice delivering an acapella rendition of William Blake’s hymn Jerusalem. From there it tumbles into the chaos, anger and the dissolute life and thrall of Johnny “Rooster’’ Byron, a man whose dream of having and holding his patch of ‘England’s green and pleasant land’ is under threat.

Pilgrim – ‘a person who makes a journey, often a long and difficult one, to a special place for religious reasons’. This is the accepted meaning of the word but it can also mean a wanderer or wayfarer. In the case of the play Pilgrims, presented by the Oily Rag Theatre Company, it refers to a soldier and a teenager quarantined together in a cabin on a spaceship travelling to a newly discovered planet, seemingly to begin new lives.