Reviews

The Wharf Revue is always good for an evening’s laughing appreciation of cleverness at the expense of any politician self-important enough and loud enough to deserve it and one or two others who will forever remain engraved upon our memories, and it has returned to Canberra in 2019 in its latest incarnation, The Wharf Revue: UNR–DACT–D.

The festival comprises of six performances showcasing both individual and group shows. Mutating Roots, Subjective Spectacle and Common Dissonance are three shows which can be seen from 14-17 November. The shows offer very different perspectives on similar themes. They all have a very meditative and reflective approach which draws heavily on dance, movement and performance art and the slow, introspective pace is often disarming.

How extraordinarily poignant is the black box? Unable to save the people it records, it holds the last moments of people’s lives in the hope of preventing future deaths. For families of crash victims, it provides the most meagre of solaces: the answer to the question “why”. Based on a biography of David Warren, the Australian inventor of the black box, Alana Valentine’s latest project Flight Memory is a tale of sadness, persistence, guts, loss and triumph, underpinned by that poignancy.

Two different, separate couples go for a clandestine (‘dirty’) weekend at Scarborough – a beach resort sort of place.  I guess Fiona Evans called her play ‘Scarborough’, because a beach resort evokes the idea of the temporary escape – either from ‘real life’ or even reality itself.