Reviews

Revisiting the troubles in Northern Ireland via the musical The Beautiful Game is a timely choice given the volatile and fragile nature of the peace agreement, especially due to Brexit. This production is a moving reminder of the horrific realities this political conflict produced and the lives it has wasted. John (Stephen Mahy) and Mary (Stephanie Wall) are played with a child-like innocence which contrasts well with the transformation into hardened adults that they make throughout the show.

In the Heights won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical. It is a high-octane musical set within a Latino community in Washington Heights, New York.

Over one long hot summer in which electricity black-outs are the norm, the drama focuses on the respective stories of three families who live and work within this community.

Each story is inter-linked, not only because of the respective family business on this particular street in Washington Heights, but also through a narrator-figure, Usnavi, played with great charm in this production by Joshua Angeles.

Once more we venture in to Discworld, where the abnormal becomes the norm. All is not well in Ankh – Morpork Opera House - as a ghost stalks the corridors while leaving strange letters for the management and killing staff. Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Org, two Lancre witches, come to investigate. That is only one step on a complicated journey through the extremes of Terry Pratchett’s writing, with an opera house and company as the linchpin for the action. Thus, there are the dancers and singers to flavour the happenings. This adaption works well.

Ipswich Musical Theatre did Mamma Mia! proud. The first community company in Queensland, to present the worldwide behemoth, the mix of ABBA tunes and a ‘paternity whodunit’ plot was irresistible to the mainly female audience. Opening in London in 1999 this jukebox musical spearheaded the era of female empowerment musicals (Wicked/Legally Blonde) and twenty years later still seems as fresh as new paint thanks to Robbie Parkin’s acute production and a youthful cast with buckets of energy.