Reviews

Australia is extremely fortunate to have a string quartet of the calibre of The Australian String Quartet. With its 40th anniversary looming next year, they have amassed an astounding body of work including 80 Australian premiere compositions.

Comprised of Dale Barltrop (violin), Francesca Hiew (violin), Chris Cartlidge (viola) and guest cellist Charlotte Miles, this unique combination of performers share a special bond that brings classical and modern string quartet compositions to Australian audiences in their latest concert entitled Aurora.

In a near dystopian world, an ageing widow rebuffs her robotic carer because it is devoid of human emotions.  Your Name Means Dream, written by Jose Rivera, tackles the problems of Artificial Intelligence and the effects it has on people. He began writing his new play only months before the pandemic, back in 2020. 

This opera entails a highly fantastical story that puts its characters on somewhat strange and adventurous paths. This leaves the opera very open to interpretation and to the imagination. Galvanising its disparate elements can be a challenge and the approach to this production seems to indulge and even accentuate its differing and incongruous parts.

After a performance of the utterly hilarious Lady MacBreast, a very experienced and fine actor remarked to Kimberly Twiner, ‘You did the whole play!’    

Well, yes, Lady MacBreast does do the whole play.  But not quite as Shakespeare wrote it.  With the physical comedy, mime, sharp observation, Bouffon and satire we expect from PO PO MO CO, Lady MacBreast rips away all the poetry, grandiloquence, rhetoric, complexity of character, majesty and tragedy.