Reviews

Camden’s Little Shop of Horrors is a great production, of a professional standard, full of uber talent, and fun! An excellent time is on hand.

For those unfamiliar with this cult musical, the show is set in the late 1960s USA, where young, good-natured but unlucky Seymour Krelborn works in a flower shop owned by Mr Mushnik. The shop is in Skid Row: the poor, rough, low end of town. Seymour dotes on his fellow employee Audrey, but she is dating Orin, a psychopath dentist.

There are laughs galore in this madcap production of the already hilarious 39 Steps. Director Hartney-Smith and her cast run riot with the consistently farcical script and the addition of some marvelously crazy props (a plumber’s plunger for a gear stick - toy planes joining the chase) and whacky physical business (the chase across the roof of the train is simply brilliant) make for a night of delicious silliness and belly laughs galore.

The ever-popular Cinematic concerts entered their fifth instalment this year and are likely to become an annual event judging by the bulging concert hall on opening night. What with a simultaneously packed frenzied Friday night of patrons in the Lyric Theatre, the whole complex was a-buzz of a slice of Brisbane theatre-goers eager to escape into the world of showbiz, including an understandably somewhat stressed mix of QPAC staff.

Moving a popular television series like the ABC’s Mother and Son from the screen to the stage is never easy, especially when the characters involved were as clearly defined and well-loved as Arthur Beare and his ageing mother, Maggie. However, if the adaptation is done by the original writer, who also writes for stage, there’s a chance that the move will work! In this case, it does!