Reviews

If it’s good-hearted, high-spirited fun that you seek, the team at Noarlunga have got you covered with a charming panto that may be short on polish but is long on likeability. With a colourful range of characters out to either help or hinder the young hero Aladdin in his adventures, and a number of low-key-but-mostly-charming songs-and-dances along the way, there should be something to please all ages here.

This play attempts to address a confronting social issue with freshness and humour. The concept is endearing with a very noble agenda. Helene (Genevieve Picot) is an elderly woman whose tendency for hoarding is placing her independent living at risk. Sophia Constantine plays both her pet cockatoo and her frustrated daughter, who is struggling to convince her mother that her hoarding is becoming unstainable. The author, Sandra Fiona Long, also acts as a playful narrator who highlights the often bizarre nature of the scenarios that are depicted.

Synonyms for conspirators include plotters, connivers, collaborators and accomplices, and all of these are true descriptions for the group who form the centre of The Conspirators, Red Phoenix Theatre’s current production.

Melbourne queer company Little Ones Theatre reveals a dark underbelly of life and love in the intimate space of Sydney’s Griffin.  

This is an adaptation of eight stories from a collection by Christos Tsiolkas published in 2014, a highly visceral and wrenching voyage though prisons, deathbeds, saunas and alleyways to cheap rent boys, drugs and porn.

Writer Dan Giovannoni doesn’t always translate the exposition of literature into living theatrical experience but, even then, Tsiolkas’ original words still shock and grabs us by the throats.