Reviews

I doubt the Queensland Symphony Orchestra have had as much fun letting their hair down since Queensland Ballet’s Strictly Gershwin earlier in the year.With maestro Simon Kenway waving the baton, they raced through this annual pot-pourri of Christmas songs, carols and religious works with musical flair and enthusiastic abandon.

Huon Valley Theatre Inc. has presented a wonderful version of the Jane Austen classic – “Pride & Prejudice – A New Musical”, and taken it to a broader audience. This musical version of the classic story, a collaboration between Carl Lawton and Louella Jury, was a vehicle for showcasing the skills and talents of the Huon Youth Theatre group, giving the young performers a chance to experience performing in venues outside their home territory. 

Santa, Baby is a two-night season of a collection of eight ten-minute skits inspired by Christmas songs (few of which appear in the production), following hard on the heels (by an hour) of Budding Theatre’s most recent production, The Night Before Christmas.

For performances mostly using actors of limited experience to stage scripts developed on a shoestring and staged on a short production schedule, on the whole the skits showed surprising ability to rouse laughter from a willing audience.

Relatively new playwright Kirsty Budding has turned out a few full-length stage plays in the past couple of years, and many shorter ones.  Her latest to hit the boards is an hour-long tale… of Christmas tales for children.  Jaded teenagers whose only exposure to life has been via their gadgets find themselves welcoming an opportunity to hear some stories, the entry point for Budding’s modernised retelling — or rather rewriting for the stage — of several classic Christmas tales.  With story piling upon story, I lost all track of how many cas