Reviews

Bob Dylan says of his Minnesota heritage: “I was born in Duluth – industrial town, shipyards, ore docks, grain elevators, mainline train yards, switching yards. It’s on the banks of Lake Superior, built on granite rock. Lot of fog horns, sailors, loggers, storms, blizzards.”  Overlaid with a 1930’s wintry patina, this is the bleak, down-at-heel setting chosen by Irish writer/director Conor McPherson for Girl From The North Country.

The Last Great Hunt present the 10th Anniversary Production of It’s Dark Outside downstairs at the State Theatre Centre. This beautiful and emotive production - originally commissioned by Perth Theatre Company, and predating the founding of The Last Great Hunt - remains a very moving theatrical experience, visually exciting but gentle and touching.

Playwrights often have a lot to say. Sometimes they try to say it all at once. Sometimes that can be a little confusing, a little overwhelming, even a little disturbing. Such is the case with Blood on the Wattle. It touches on tawdry party politics, climate change, refugee detention, racism, discrimination, misogyny, stalking … even rape. Significant themes. And theatre is a good way to air them. But packaging them into one play means a fair bit of manipulation. And a fair bit for the audience to navigate.

Theatre makers often say that after lockdowns we need something light and bubbly to cheer us up.  I’m not so sure, given some of the crimes recently staged in the name of laughs, including a couple at the Sydney Theatre Company,

Page Rattray’s exquisitely comic version of Blithe Spirit is not among them.  Interestingly, Noël Coward wrote his acclaimed farce during his own lockdown in the depths of wartime in 1941 (and took just six days to complete it).