Reviews

‘Once upon a time…’  Into the Woods reworks and combines and subverts old and familiar ‘fairy tales: Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood and – a central thread – a Baker and his Wife who long for a child. It has all the hallmarks of Sondheim and Lapine’s work: the distinctive music, the clever, pointed lyrics with their internal rhymes, puns and character revelation, the instant switches in the storytelling from pathos to comedy, from bubbling joy to the deepest sadness, and a confronting moral ambiguity.

In *another huge bay of Carriageworks, Yung Lung offers yet *another apocalyptic take, this one a hyper dance party from Melbourne’s Chunky Move. 

The audience stands and wanders around a monstrous central sculpture of mashed kaleidoscopically-coloured god-like heads, encircled by a bank of 12 screens showing fractured images of confronting oddities and news media (Kris Moyes).  This is our manic obsession with digital culture.

How do you turn a seven Academy Award-winner musical movie, with a paper-thin plot, into a dazzling show-stopping stage musical? The answer is currently on stage at the Lyric Theatre, where Christopher Wheeldon, and his partner in crime, set and costume designer Bob Crowley, have produced the most delightful homage to the original 1951 MGM musical.

THERE WAS a little bit of undersea magic at the Townsville Civic Theatre last night for the (long-awaited) opening of this production of The Little Mermaid, which has been in the pipeline for some time.

This was a bright and lively production which sparkled in many places. It was carried by an enthusiastic cast, appropriately eccentric performances, colourful and imaginative costuming (the illusion of the movement underwater was very clever) and an outstanding orchestra.