Reviews

Ripcord is, on the surface, a rollicking comedic gem.  However, as one expects from playwright Lindsay-Abaire, the layers beneath are where the riches of the story lie.

Securing a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007 for Rabbit Hole, American playwright, lyricist and screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire excels in astute juxtapositions of comedy and tragedy within insightfully written texts.

The Importance of Being Earnest, while being one of the most oft produced plays in community theatre, is still a very popular choice for both audiences and theatre companies. Well done, as this production is, it cannot fail to charm - and remains an extremely funny play despite, as director Douglas Sutherland Bruce points out in his program notes, some of the satire now falling flat.

Jude Perl has four Green Room Awards and a Best Cabaret Melbourne Fringe 2018 Award.  Her songs are witty, intricate, clever, ironic, rather self-mocking and musically sophisticated (could that be a problem?) and she writes and sings them all herself.  So, with this show, we might wonder why isn’t she a star?  Why aren’t her ‘greatest hits’, actual hits?  These are questions she asks too – and answers - in her very first song in this show, a song that also asks, ‘why can’t people respect me?’ 

Michael Gow’s classic Australian play has been given a light and airy production by Timothy Hall with the third year graduating drama students from Griffith University.

Gow’s play, set in 1967, about three families from different socio-economic backgrounds who converge on the Gold Coast for their annual summer holidays, has been revived constantly and studied by at least two generations of school children since its premiere in 1986.