Reviews

Experimental musical dinner theatre isn’t common, and theatre exploring the dark underbelly of bigotry and polarisation which expressly wants the audience to feel warmly safe is even less so. The People, which is a loose group of people centred around Morgan Rose and Katrina Cornwell have managed to bring a piece to life which does just that.

The performance space for the Biennale of Sydney at the White Bay Power Station is ‘out the back’. Which is not to say that it’s small. Open plan, the audience faces 40 steps to a first floor platform (with occasional strolling viewers), only a third of the way to a huge cathedral-style roof, hung with draperies and flags too distant to discern. It’s hardly the venue for an intimate one-person show.

Yet it’s here that Samoan/Australian actor Tommy Misa has to tell his tender, troubled story of life in Canberra as a gay boy and youth. 

The Magic Kazoo is the latest in a series of operas adapted and produced by Freeze Frame Opera for Primary School students. Whereas previous shows have adapted familiar stories or used opera music to shape known stories, The Magic Kazoo aims to capture the elements that make The Magic Flute enchanting, while creating a short opera story that appeals to young audiences.

This is a timely new Australian play centred on mental health.

The central character is Anna, an eighteen year-old who has been on medication since as long as she can remember. The play opens with Anna, appearing quite normal, establishing a relationship with Oliver, a male friend. In the background is Anna’s protective mother Renee who encourages the relationship. However, Anna decides not to take her medication anymore and discovers that as a child she had a promising writing talent, a talent that seems to have been suffocated by medication.