Reviews

Written by playwright Dennis Kelly in 2016 Girls and Boys features Justine Clarke in the demanding one-person work with evocative direction from State Theatre Company’s Mitchell Butel.  Ms Clarke’s performance is a revelation and her immersion in the character is intense and riveting throughout this soliloquy where the audience is privy to reminiscences, opinions and confessions in our assumed role of listener; a kind of second character implicit (perhaps even complicit) in the narrative.

The Australian Ballet’s co-production (with the Joffrey Ballet) of Anna Karenina has been a long time coming to the Melbourne stage. Originally scheduled as part of the 2020 season, the closures of the pandemic have left this ballet in the wings for two years.  At first glance, the epic Russian story of love, lust and loss seems the perfect vehicle with which to launch the season. 

‘Even West End’s moved away,’ says Clara, venting her frustration when returning to her home city of Adelaide. Her older sister Sarah has never left (‘weekends in Victor don’t count’), her simmering acceptance of what she is, and has, finally boiling over. For both sisters, this story is about their choices, how they see themselves after they’ve made them, and what to do next.

This is often considered a classic stage thriller, where the audience watches a supposedly perfect crime being planned. Is anything perfect? The play was first performed in 1952, then Alfred Hitchcock turned it into a Hollywood film that you can still see on TV. The plot centres around a retired tennis pro, Tony Wendice, who is planning the murder of his socialite wife after learning of an affair she had with a science–fiction novelist.  It looks perfect, with his attention to detail, but that evolves as the play progresses.