Reviews

Humans don't like the liminal. We recoil from the “not quite” human of the stray hair or abandoned toenail, but the liminal space created in this new work by Stephanie Francis is a lacuna in which to consider human existence when it is not quite one thing or the other.

Maverick Theatre Productions present this new series of plays set on a park bench, written, and directed by Noel O’Neill. Like its predecessor, this production is a collection of six plays that take place on a park bench, somewhere in the world.

There have been many spelling bees/ contests over time but this one is almost off the planet. This musical was first performed in 2005 and is set in a geographically ambiguous Putman Valley Middle School. It centres on six quirky adolescents who compete to win the “Bee” – the annual spelling contest.  It is doubtful that  six such weirdly diverse students could be found anywhere else but this mixture made for a good night’s entertainment.

Verdi is always an ambitious ask for any opera company. State Opera of SA’s production of Macbeth is no exception. Full of rich orchestration, thrilling arias and duets, rousing choruses, and a plot by the Bard himself, it relies on visual and aural impact from start to finish, this production succeeds in many ways.

Macbeth was the first Shakespeare play that Verdi adapted for the operatic stage. Almost twenty years later, Macbeth was revised and expanded in a French version and given in Paris on 21 April 1865.