Reviews

“Sex, suicide, mental health, not typically the thematic headliners of a youth theatre production.”  So states director, Georgia Broomhall, in her excellent directors notes for Pelican Productions terrific production of Heathers: The Musical by Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy. Yes – and no. Yes, because its subject matter is provocative and confronting; No – because these themes still matter to contemporary youth.

This may be the darkest most horrifying musical ever written but, in the week we have been hearing endlessly about pet eating from a US Presidential candidate, it may also currently be the funniest.

This polished, energetic and technically brilliant production of the Victorian Opera about a wronged and vengeful barber and a lonely chancer pie shop proprietor literally grabs you by the throat and mesmerises you.

Trent Dalton may have reached rock star status in his hometown. The excitement and enthusiasm in the crowd for opening night of Love Stories was electric. The audience wasn’t just at fever pitch because Brisbane is ever so proud of our local boy made good. We had at least seven more paragraphs worth of valid reasons to be so effervescent. 

Nosferatu is a bit hard to explain. Originally it was a 1922 German film, a thinly veiled adaptation of Dracula. Few copies of this influential film exist today because the estate of Bram Stoker sued the production company and had the copies destroyed.

Keziah Warner adapted this story under commission from the Malthouse theatre and was subsequently awarded Highly Commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards of 2024.