Reviews

Andrew Bovell is one of our best and most frequently performed playwrights. His stage adaptation of Kate Glenville’s novel The Secret River won five Helpmann Awards in 2013, his 1996 Awgie Award-winning Speaking in Tongues became the critically acclaimed 2001 movie Lantana, whilst his When the Rain Stops Falling has become a modern masterpiece, was named the ‘Best Play of 2010’ by Time magazine and won 5 awards when it was produced at Lincoln Center, New York.

Emil and the Detectives is about a group of kids who band together to help a boy recover his stolen goods and get justice. It’s the first and quintessential story of the genre, later personified by Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five. Based on Erich Kästner’s novella, Emil und die Detektive, first published in 1929, it has never been out-of-print. And Slingsby’s production, directed by Andy Packer, and adapted by Nicki Bloom, looks like setting its own record having toured Australia, USA, India, China and the UK.

Opera Queensland this year celebrates its 40th Anniversary, and what better way to celebrate it than a sparkling new production of an opera that is considered a cornerstone of the repertoire, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. The story of the servants Figaro and Susanna and their efforts to get married and foil the efforts of their philandering employer, Count Almavira to seduce Susanna, is the classic infidelity plot enjoyed throughout the years in everything from Upstairs Downstairs to Downton Abbey.

True West is not a piece of theatre to be taken lightly. It is confronting, powerful, and at times very uncomfortable to watch. The audience rides a bronco throughout this play - it bucks and jolts and throws us to the ground on many occasions. Unlike a bronco ride, however, which is jarring and fairly mindless, True West is confrontational and thought-provoking.