Reviews

Occasionally Stage Whispers gets complaints for not mentioning the sound of a musical in our reviews.

So let me redress any past deficiencies by describing the extraordinary audio experience the Willoughby Theatre Company provided its audience during Mamma Mia!

The mixing of on-stage performers sometimes engaged in fierce choreography, pit singers, spare cast members in their own backstage ‘studio’ and a touch of electronic embellishments was at times as sharp as a highly produced album listened to with headphones.

For the ten unique performances of Tattletales, Ponydog Productions have chosen an excellent venue in The Bard’s Apothecary in Crossley Street of the top end of Bourke Street. This great friendly little ‘watering hole’ serves cocktails and has an interesting wine list and a comfortable small performance space down stairs.

A show based on Tarot! Mysterious? Edgy? Risky? Do not let any trepidation about the possibility of being put on the spot hold you back from this is truly engaging, masterfully managed and fun evening.

Watching The Mousetrap is an experience dripping in nostalgia, both for 1950s England, when you could cut wires to disconnect a phone connection, when people listened to the wireless, and personal reflections on making the pilgrimage to see the play on the West End.

Afterwards I almost felt like I should be walking back from the theatre and onto the London Tube, as I did one night after seeing the Mousetrap in the mid 1980’s.

The Theatre Royal airconditioning was even turned up to give the feeling of an English winter chill.

Two things – no three - about Eddie Pattinson.  First, they are ‘non-binary’ (something we are told in the first few minutes and a member of the audience is recruited to hold up a sign, when signalled, reading NOT A WOMAN).  Second, they are small, slight, and endearing with hair of brilliant green, a nose piercing and one beaded earing with a cross on it and when they use their face or body to illustrate or counterpoint an idea, we see a fine comedian.  Third, they can deliver very dense, complex material in fully formed sentences at rocket speed without tr