Reviews

With limited opportunity to attract widely recognised talent, it's possibly predictable that a startup dance company's public debut would set out to distinguish itself in choreography, dance style, music, or production.  Strings Attached, Australian Dance Party’s inaugural offering, is a medley of pieces that set about distinguishing itself on all four counts.  Other than by using the one set (beautifully decorated with string nets) and more-or-less the same cast, what chiefly connects the pieces in Strings Attached is an impression that danc

Which Way Home has had a long gestation during which Katie Beckett has picked up some writing awards.  We can see why with this show.  With Jane Bodie as dramaturg and Rachael Maza as director, Which Way Home mixes broad comedy with the most touching emotions – and a heartbreaking backstory.  The way the characters transform, revealing more and more of themselves up to the final moments is handled beautifully, with smooth transitions into and out of the past.  This is not a show of high drama emotions; apart from a few flashes of exasperation or a

British Playwright Patrick Barlow has a penchant for always challenging actors and with his company, The National Theatre of Brent, has even staged The Ring Cycle…with a cast of three. In fact, he and his company have overcome several similar apparent impossibilities, creating small-cast works in which, in his words, they have played “fifty Valkyries, ten thousand Zulus, the entire population of Nazareth and a million marauding Russians”.

After the headline talent, commercial run of Tony Award winning Avenue Q at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne CBD (closed only 16 August), you might think it’s crazy brave of little, amateur Beaumaris Theatre to mount their production so soon – and you might expect some disappointment.  Not at all.  This is a vibrant, energetic production that delivers all the humour, cheerful cynicism, energy and poignancy – and professionalism - required.