Reviews

ApocOlympics

Freak Party. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Note New Venue and dates: Trades Hall - Old Council Chambers: 15-21 Apr 2017 @ 9:30pm (8:30 Sun), No Wednesday

Down a lane, up several flights of worn stairs into a tiny “theatre” created with black masking attached to walls with gaffer tape and clothes pegs – this must be a Melbourne Comedy Festival gig!

Comedy duo Freak Party (Dan Pavatich andJustin Porter) transport us from 2017 to the year 2056, and a world unrecognizable due to the nuclear fallout from a 2017 “Trump” war.

Blake Everett is King of Nothing

Written & performed by Blake Everett. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Tasma Terrace, 6 Parliament Place, Melbourne. 10-13 & 18-22 April 2017

Blake Everett is a shaggy, boofy guy in a Hawaiian shirt.  He opens his show with a jaunty, cocky song, ‘I’m Better Than You’.  He might be King of Nothing, but he’s better than us because he’s doing what he loves: he’s a comedian. 

Richard 3

By William Shakespeare. Bell Shakespeare. Directed by Peter Evans. Canberra Theatre, 6 – 15 April, 2017 and Arts Centre Melbourne, 20 April – 7 May.

Kate Mulvany clearly relishes playing Richard 3.  Sharing some of his physical limitations which she’s able to use to impressive effect, she has an affection for this maligned villain. Her Richard is impish, clever, bitter, murderous with an infectious giggle, and emphatically, convincingly masculine. There’s something of Cabaret’s Emcee to him, a consummate but self-conscious performer. Her brilliant portrayal would make this production captivating, even without the lavish set, attention to detail and excellent cast.

Soap

Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Coopers Malthouse. Mar 30 – April 22, 2017

SOAP’s international reputation is completely deserved.  The capacity audience at the Malthouse were greeted with a set of seemingly empty claw-footed bathtubs arrayed on different levels….and the audience was immediately captured as performers arose from the tubs and danced their way through a bath-time routine, with accompaniment from an operatic soprano – the ultimate singer in the shower! 

Ellie, Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt).

By Monica Zanetti. Feet First Ventures & The Depot Theatre. March 28 – April 9, 2017

A charming light hearted romantic comedy written and directed by Monica Zanetti.

Zanetti’s story is of a teenage girl Ellie (Sophie Hawkshaw) coming to terms with her sexuality and her desire to ask her friend Abbie (Geraldine Viswanathan) as her date to the school formal, prompted by her dead aunt (Monica Zanetti), whom only Ellie can see. With Meagan Caratti playing her bewildered mother and Margi de Ferranti playing a dual role of Patty and Ellie’s teacher. A funny light hearted delight at The Depot Theatre. Well directed, with an excellent ensemble cast.

Minefields and Miniskirts

Written by Siobhan McHugh: Adapted by Terence O’Connell. Directed by Bronwyn Morrow, Arts Theatre, Brisbane. April 8 – April 29, 2017.

The Vietnam War remains in our memories for that generation and this play gives another perspective on what occurred in the battle zone and back in Australia. Unfortunately many remember the reception the returning soldiers received without actually understanding what horrors most of them had gone through in the conflict zone. Even more disturbing is the lack of understanding of the roles women played in Vietnam.

Shirley Gnome - Taking it up the Notch

Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Butterfly Club. April 3 – 16, 2017

Arriving on stage in a frilled, sequined and bedazzled country-singer-manqué creation, complete with sequined hat, Canadian cabaret comedian Shirley Gnome captured her audience in a heartbeat opening with a song about, well, taking things up the notch. 

She breathlessly shared the news about her recent signing to the largest independent record label in Canada, vowing to spend the advance by coming to Australia, before the record label “realised what it was they had bought”.

Les Misérables

By Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. Lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer Free-Rain Theatre Company.. Director Dr Cate Clelland. The Q – Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. April 4 – 12, 2017

Free-Rain’s gutsy take on Les Misérablesmade me fall in love with this wonderful score again. With a somewhat pared-back treatment, this production emphasises the moral dilemmas and social commentary. Peter Cousens makes a conflicted Valjean, with “Valjean’s Soliloquy” an early highlight. Tony Falla (Javert) is initially overshadowed but comes into his own by “Javert’s Soliloquy”. Fantine (Amy Dunham) pours anguish into a heart-wrenching ‘I Dreamed a Dream”.

Double Denim

Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Belleville, Globe Alley, Melbourne. March 28 – April 4, 2017. Extra show now added - April 21 at 11pm.

Tucked into one of Melbourne’s laneways, Belleville has several odd little performance spaces, including the one chosen for Michelle Brasier and Laura Frew, the cast of Double Denim, a slightly claustrophobic little stage and stairway – which turned out to be perfect for their manic brand of up-close comedy, which is joyously silly. 

Trotsky and Friends

Written & Directed by Brendan Black. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. La Mama Courthouse, Carlton VIC. 5-16 April 2017.

In Travesties, Tom Stoppard put together historical figures who really were in the same place at the same time: James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin, Nadya Krupskaya, and Tristan Tzara in Zurich in 1917 – that is, during The Great War.  With Trotsky and Friends, Brendan Black discovered that a raft of famous people all were – or could’ve been - in Vienna in 1913.

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