Reviews

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.

Everyone should experience Flamenco music at least once in their life. The hauntingly beautiful mellifluous melodies, the earthiness of the hand-clapping, the agonizing passion of the singing and the rhythms of the guitars and the percussion are things that cannot be explained – they must be felt. The audience on Monday night certainly felt every moment of the 75 minute performance, resulting in two spontaneous standing ovations. Those of us who were there will carry the entire performance with us forever.

Ordinary Days is a delightful New York musical, full of characters and crackling wit that would be out of place in any other city in the world, from a set piece about getting lost in the Metropolitan Museum to that particular sarcasm that’s as abrasive as it is hilarious. As Adam Gwon’s first piece, here’s a certain hopeful sweetness that I’ve seen in other young people’s work—Greta Gerwig’s film Francis Ha and Vikram Seth’s verse novel The Golden Gate have something of the same feel.