Reviews

This is a highly energetic and entertaining performance of Shakespeare’s magical comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Australian Shakespeare Company takes a very traditional approach to the play, incorporating some contemporary elements that preserve all the original features but make the play highly accessible, helping to accentuate the comedy. The staging of the production is truly remarkable and allows for a level of grandeur and spectacular effects not usually associated or feasible in an outdoor setting. 

If ever there was an argument about how essential the Arts are in the time of Covid, then look no further than OA’s elegant and fun production of The Merry Widow. On the practical side I’d suggest that such productions keep in gainful employment far more people than sporting events, and therefore are better for the economy.

With its potent tale of love and diversity, amidst New York’s impoverished yet still vibrant arts community living with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, 1990s rock musical RENT resonates powerfully today.

Baring the Drama Theatre stage to a black box - with a split-level podium as the central playing area, flanked by the almost obligatory moveable skeletal staircases and bridge - Dan Barber’s set design evokes urban decay. Unmatched chairs are strewn like kerbside detritus.

Melbourne Writers’ Theatre present a double bill of eleven short plays.  The first half is the six monologues of The Metropolis Monologues, directed and designed by Elizabeth Walley, and produced by Clare Mendes.  Staging is stripped to the bare minimum but that is no drawback here.  There is no clear theme uniting the six – except perhaps the aftermath of disaster in four of them, or a pressing problem in the present in the other two.  The monologues range from Michael Olsen’s alien (Marli van der Bijl) reporting defiantly to ‘Control&rs