Reviews

Aladdin

Music: Alan Menken. Lyrics: Howard Ashman, Tim Tice, Chad Beguelin. Book: Chad Beguelin. Disney Theatrical Productions. Director/Choreographer: Casey Nicholaw Musical Director: Geoffrey Castles. Lyric Theatre, QPAC. Opening Night: 24 February 2018

Aladdin has become known as the musical which gets a standing ovation in the middle of the first act. It did it when I saw it on Broadway, and it did it last night when it opened in Brisbane. “Friend Like Me” is the number and it’s performed in a glittering and sparkling Aladdin’s cave and with its pop-culture references and an incredible rousing tap finish, it literally stops the show. You couldn’t ask for a better example of Broadway brilliance.

The Nose

Music by Dimitri Shostakovich. Libretto by various, after the story by Nikolai Gogol. Opera Australia. Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. February 21 - March 3, 2018

Opera buffs have the opportunity to see the most extraordinary production of a contemporary work staged at a level of extravagance and wit utterly incongruous with the small number of performances in the season. Ex-pat Director Barrie Kosky, now resident artist leader of the Komische Oper Berlin, has managed to pull off a production that meshes  jokes about the Rooty Hill RSL with surreal scenes of dancing noses.

Lethal Indifference

By Anna Barnes. Sydney Theatre Company. Director: Jessica Arthur. Wharf 1 Theatre, Sydney. 22 February - 10 March 2018.

In a grey-carpeted Melbourne flat on an upper floor, with rolling doors to a small balcony, sits a sweet, chatty, pregnant woman. With her distinctive New Zealand vowel sounds, Emily Barclay tells us how she moved from handing out Green how-to-vote cards at a council election to lucking a job as Media Adviser at a Family Violence Centre.

Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead

By Tom Stoppard. The Stirling Players (SA). Stirling Community Theatre. 23 February - 10 March, 2018

Tom Stoppard’s first major play and now a modern ‘classic’ of contemporary theatre Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was first performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966. Coincidentally, Adelaide’s Stirling Players’ excellent production of the play, while not part of Adelaide Fringe, runs in parallel with much of this year’s festival.

5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche

By Andrew Hobgood and Evan Linder. Directed by Lorna Mackie. Henry Summer, Northbridge, WA for Grey Lantern Productions and Fringe World. Feb 21-24, 2018

You think that you are going to see a play at the rear of a rather noisy pub, but you discover that it is 1956 and you are attending the annual quiche breakfast of the Susan B Anthony Society for the Sisterhood of Gertrude Stein. You are greeted warmly, given an appropriate 1950s name tag and take your seat with other “widows” to wait for the meeting.

Cold War fever is at its peak, and when there is a huge explosion, we find that there is more going on than first appears.

Beyond The Sea - A Tribute To Bobby Darin and the Crooners

Adelaide Fringe 2018. Presented by Vogue Music. BeBe's Room. February 23, 2018

This show is performed by Paul Hogan - not the one with the big knife, despite having “Mack The Knife” in the repertoire - and was presented as a one night only, two hour show packed with ballads and songs from the 50’s and 60’s era.

It's Only Life

By John Bucchino. Davine Interventionz Productions. Adelaide Fringe. Parks Theatre. 20-25 February, 2018

In the Western Suburbs in Adelaide there is an absolute gem of a show – John Bucchino’s American musical revue It’s Only Life. This has been produced and directed by David Gauci, founder of Davine Interventionz Productions.

Mr Gauci has taken a huge risk, artistically and financially in producing this work, which includes bringing out John Bucchino to perform in his own work with some of Adelaide’s best Musical Theatre people.

The Empress and Me

Adelaide Fringe Festival 2018. Grist To the Mill Productions Ltd. Bakehouse Theatre. Feb 22, 27 & March 2, 2018

For 40 years half the world was ruled by women, namely Queen Victoria and Empress Cixi of China. Lizzie Der Ling lived through 16 years of their reigns while being up close and personal with one of them, as depicted in The Empress and Me.

Michelle Yim embodies Lizzie Der Ling as she relates a piece of history that would not be believed if it were not documented in 2 books, ‘Two Years in the Forbidden Palace’ and ‘Old Buddha’.

Enter Ophelia

Essential Theatre and Three Birds Theatre. La Mama Theatre. Feb 20 - Mar 4, 2018.

Ophelia - a muse for the ages!

And so it goes with Enter Ophelia, an exciting new production that unites Essential Theatre’s Shakespearean expertise and Three Birds Theatre’s propulsion to reinvent female characters into powerful self-driven figures.

Sense and Spontaneity

Fringe World. Directed by Jessica Messenger and Esther Longhurst. Circus Theatre, Fringe Central, Perth, WA. Feb 21-25, 2018

It is rare to see a show that has audience appeal from the 'under tens' to the 'over eighties', but Sense and Spontaneity is ticking this box with its warm and funny, improvised Jane Austen romp.

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