Reviews

‘Where is it written what am I supposed to be?’  It’s a key line here and it recurs.  It’s the key question in a play about identity and roles – gender and otherwise.  In their joint program note, Jessica Bellamy and Jean Tong tell us, “This is a work for everyone who is tired of the same old stories, because we are too.’

After visiting 29 countries, Priscilla’s bus has at last called in to Brisbane on the final leg of its current 10th anniversary tour, and if last night’s reaction is anything to go by it’s a gigantic hit. The first time it’s ever played Brisbane, this exuberant jukebox-musical is a high-camp, raunchy and glittering treat.

Little Match Productions, a Brisbane independent theatre company, has devised a delightful take on the Edward Lear poem that has been fascinating children for more than a century. The title characters are both female, so this production’s interpretation as a tale of unlikely friendship and love has an underlying subtext of diversity and acceptance. The theme continues as the lead pair meet a series of strange animal characters that test their preconceptions on their run-away adventure together.

This play is the dramatisation of the story of the late ABC PM Radio Host, Mark Colvin and the selfless donation of a replacement kidney by a British woman who only knew him via the airwaves and social media. 

Spanning many years, the story starts in London during the last decade, at the height of the phone-tapping scandal that rocked the print media world and Rupert Murdoch’s News Of The World.