Reviews

Johanna Allen’s 70-minute show Cake is a salacious celebration of reckless consumption and excess. She is coquettish, bawdy, flippant, flighty and passionate, all within minutes. She gambols through the works of musical geniuses including Cole Porter, Madonna, Abba (a particular favourite of mine in this show), Kylie Minogue and the Eurhythmics, demonstrating a powerful, soaring and compelling vocal range through a myriad of styles including musical theatre, pop, jazz and light opera.

This Boy’s in Love, written and performed by Adriano Cappelletta, is a ‘gay’ romance. It has been successfully performed and acclaimed at numerous national and international festivals, including the Adelaide Fringe Festival. These current performances of only two shows are essentially a return season, which is fortunate for me and others who have previously missed this highly acclaimed piece of  ‘gay’ theatre’.

I was feeling a bit out of it. Here I was at Hamer Hall to review an Iranian refugee who escaped to Canada via Italy and made it big on Broadway, and I was the only one there who had never heard of him. The audience had high expectations and it didn’t take long for him to meet them completely, and I was soon as big a fan as the rest of them.

Apart from his obvious vocal talent, it was his easy stage manner and the way he made everyone feel he was talking just to them that got everyone in. There was a lot of love in the room.

It usually takes a lot to impress critics. After all, we see a lot of theatre. On a cold winter’s night in Adelaide this week I attended the preview of Emma Knights Productions’ musical love story I Love You Because and was at first won over by a delicious complimentary lemon cupcake (a typically unique Knights touch) and a glass of wine. But it was the show that really hit the spot. It was a delight.