Reviews

Alice Birch writes unreservedly and unabashedly about how women are treated at home, in bed, at work, even in the supermarket. She writes in a blatantly feminist voice that is loud and bold and unembarrassed. And that is what she demands of the cast that brings this play to the stage. Her stage instructions at the beginning of the play are explicit:

If any vomiting, crying or shouting needs to happen off stage, the audience should be able to glimpse it.

There shouldn’t be any set.

I have been attending opera performances for over fifty years, but cannot recall feeling as elated as I was after attending Opera Australia’s latest offering, Massenet’s Don Quichotte. I have not seen it before and have no music in my extensive collection from this little known opera.

I was constantly swept away by the magnificent music. The five acts were reduced to two halves, with the inclusion of some ballet music from the same composer’s Le Cid. The haunting entr’acte to the final scene was a highlight.

Incorruptible is Black Adder meets The Life of Brian and then some.

Were this play not so precisely staged, if its music were not so integrated and evocative, and the two lead women – Georgia Brooks and Teresa Duddy – not so well cast and so disciplined, then Carmilla could fail.  It could even risk seeming rather silly.  But staging, music, casting and performance are so well judged and well felt here that this adaptation of a 19th century Gothic novella works very well indeed.