Reviews

To Schapelle And Back

Melbourne International Comedy Festival. The Butterfly Club. April 2022.

A true-blue Aussie is our Schapelle Corby, sentenced to twenty years for smuggling 4.2kg of marijuana in her boogie board bag. The new comedy show by Alex Hines To Schapelle And Back, in all its crazy mayhem, is a fuzzy expose about the tacky Australian Media and their piranha-like tactics for a news story, while raising issues around trauma.

Ross Noble: On the Go

Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Athenaeum Theatre, 188 Collins St. 30 March – 24 April 2022.

This show sees Ross Noble continually on the go in terms of his train of thought and his physical movement. Both indicate hyperactivity and there is a frequent suggestion of mania that is disarmingly captivating. Noble takes a very risky approach to stand-up comedy and has a very loose structure to the show, if any at all. This is part of the skill and charm that he displays which produces a complex web of impressions, observations and inner workings of an extremely busy mind.

The Boys

By Gordon Graham. Alchemy Artistic. Directed by Amy Kowalczuk. Produced in affiliation with Shadowhouse PITS and Sophie Benassi. ACT Hub at The Causeway Hall, Kingston. 13 – 16 April 2022

With terrifying realism, punctuated with moments of stylized beauty both sublime and dreadful, Alchemy Artistic’s debut production The Boys is a meticulously crafted exploration of masculinity at its most toxic. Loosely based on Anita Cobby’s murder, the horror here is not in graphic violence but in the hyperreal presentation of male brutality, an emotional landscape increasingly bulging with anger which devastates all when it erupts.

Bleep Bloop – a pop comedy album

Written & Performed by Lou Wall. Music Co-Writer James Gales. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Trades Hall, Carlton. 11 – 24 April 2022

Photo by Emma Holland.

Empathy Training

Written and directed by Brendan Black and Martin Chellew. La Mama Courthouse, Carlton. April 12 - April 17, 2022

This play pokes gentle fun at the attempt to lead four high-profile, self-absorbed people to understand the impact of their actions and choices on others. They have been forced to do empathy training and the process used to try to develop some understanding in them forms the content of the play.

Roald Dahl’s The Twits

Adapted for the stage by shake & stir. Cremorne Theatre, Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), Brisbane. April 1 – 23, 2022

Fans of Roald Dahl’s cheeky children’s classic The Twits will know that it is one of Dahl’s typically non-PC tales of terrible, smelly, ugly characters who run a circus, play practical jokes and fight with one another – a lot! This gives the award-winning team at shake & stir – one of our premier touring companies – a wonderful setting to bring the tale to life for theatre goers, young and old.

Wayside Bride

By Alana Valentine. Belvoir Street Theatre. April 2 – May 29, 2022

Alana Valentine gives voice to stirring stories of outsiders who, rejected by mainstream religion, chose instead to be married by Ted Noffs at his famous Wayside Chapel in Kings Cross.  Noff’s Methodist superiors took a dim view of him prioritising social need over doctrine, and his defence against charges of heresy is Valentine’s main story. 

Breathing Corpses

By Laura Wade. Eye Contact Theatre. Directed by Jess Davis. Kings Cross Theatre, Sydney. April 8 – 23, 2022

Some theatre companies have had really bad luck with COVID-19: then there’s Eye Contact Theatre. In 2020 they were 24 hours away from bump-in at the Kings Cross Theatre when – bingo! - the whole thing was called off. And now, two years and a new cast later, just when everything is looking good, two of their lead actors have come down with the wretched disease, leaving fill-ins Di Adams and Gerard Carroll to boldly read from scripts on opening night. Thanks, COVID!

Kit Kat Prov

An Improvised Cabaret. Impro Melbourne. Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Melbourne Town Hall, Backstage Room. Friday and Saturday evenings, April 2022.

Seedy and dark, in an unassuming location, somewhere in the hub of the Melbourne Comedy Festival, burrowed in the secret hallways of the Melbourne Town Hall, there is Kit Kat Prov - An Improvised Cabaret  (Improvisation Melbourne Company), oozing with eagerness to taunt audiences with a bunch of sassy comedy in their new show.

The Great Un-Wondering of Wilbur Whittaker

By Dan Giovanni. Directed by Luke Kerridge. Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre of WA, Perth WA. April 9-16, 2022

The Great Un-Wondering of Wilbur Whittaker is a large-scale production that feels like the biggest production to come out of Barking Gecko to date. Fun, exciting and both literally and figuratively full of wonder, this is a school holiday treat - a family show with a difference.

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