Reviews

A View From the Park, a co-production between Maverick Theatre Productions and Old Mill Theatre, is a collection of six short plays, written and directed by local author Noel O’Neill. All two handers, set on a park bench, there is a lovely variety to the stories, and they are being well received by Covid capacity audiences.

The set consists of a rather attractive park bench, with hints of the park and the time of day being provided by subtle lighting design by John Woolrych.

This opera is a contemplative and melancholy exploration of Kate Kelly (Emily Burke, soprano) and her tumultuous relationship with the land, men and the authorities. The show opens with ‘Bricky’ Foster (Andrew Moran, baritone) whose deep tones effectively capture the hypermasculinity of his character and the regrettable actions that it cultivates. There is both a bitterness and a charm to this character and this reveals an interesting complexity to his persona.

The theme of this opera is especially apt for the current circumstances in Victoria and the story captures many themes around the way contemporary romantic relationships are developed and sustained. The “to camera” format is ingenious and produces a powerful atmosphere of intimacy. The four outstanding performers Georgia Wilkinson (soprano), Morgan Carter (soprano), Nigel Huckle (tenor) and Sam Ward (baritone) appear on the screen in Caravaggio like fashion: dramatically set against a dark background.

‘To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune, but to write and read comes by nature’ – a line from Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing that sums up the play The Man Who Wrote Shakespeare, but did the Bard really write it?

Playwright David Cronin has devoted an amazing amount of time to delving into the premise that Shakespeare was not solely the author of his own works. While this play is a combination of fictional dialogue combined with fact, he has kept, as accurately as possible, to documented evidence.