Reviews

Back in the early seventies, Peter Brook rounded up a motley group of English actors and together they travelled across Africa presenting improvised and spontaneous theatre vignettes to small villages, towns and cities. They explore the naïve and thwarted call for philanthropic British colonialism, but Brook and his entourage are soul searching  for  personal meaning and depth.

Thriller, The Woman in Black is currently frightening audiences in Perth, during its fourth stop on a National Tour. This exciting play, with its gentle manner, is directed with precision and features perfectly tuned acting performances.

When Arthur Kipps approaches an actor to help him tell his “story that must be told”, the actor turns the story into a performance piece - but has he taken on more than he bargained for, and are we witnesses to the rehearsal of this presentation, being drawn into something very sinister?

We see what seems to be workshop in which a half-built structure of gold and glowing scaffolding (designed brilliantly by Anna Cordingley) occupies and dominates the stage.  Sarah Mainwaring, Scott Price and Bron Batten are the workers whose job it is to assemble this intricate structure, joining and slotting pieces together.  What it might be is revealed, beautifully lit by Richard Vabre, at the very end.  Only Mainwaring, who has doggedly done the bulk of the work, is there to see it – and it does not make her happy. 

What is love if not an act of bravery? Loving someone despite the hardships. Loving someone even if their actions cause you pain. As a poet, deciphering love is one of my passions, so I was curious then to attend this show to see – or more so hear – interpretations of love. I have a certain obsession with music. It can capture what words cannot. Having a full orchestra on stage excites me. Katie Noonan with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, together with the Melbourne Youth Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Antonioli – I wasn’t missing this.