Reviews

Burlesque, a well-established art form in itself, relies on scandalous humor, high glamour, and elaborate staging, and this year’s 55 minute Shake It Fringe offering provides just that. A variety show, including striptease, this show embraces old fashioned glamour, temptation, raucous and carefully planted entendres, and truly gorgeous bodies. Traditional burlesque integrates striptease with vaudeville, comedy sketches, circus, acrobatics, juggling, and singing, and all of that is included across the nine performance numbers.

Musica Viva’s FutureMakers program develops and nurtures emerging musical talent in Australia. The Melbourne-based ensemble Partridge String Quartet are the 2020-2022 FutureMakers and their incredible talent is currently on show at the Recital Centre. The quartet features Jos Jonker (Guest Violin), Mana Ohashi (Violin), Eunise Cheng (Viola)

Daniel Smith (Cello), and they team up with cellist, James Morley, for a performance of Franz Schubert's final chamber work, the String Quintet in C major. 

Written by playwright Dennis Kelly in 2016 Girls and Boys features Justine Clarke in the demanding one-person work with evocative direction from State Theatre Company’s Mitchell Butel.  Ms Clarke’s performance is a revelation and her immersion in the character is intense and riveting throughout this soliloquy where the audience is privy to reminiscences, opinions and confessions in our assumed role of listener; a kind of second character implicit (perhaps even complicit) in the narrative.

The Australian Ballet’s co-production (with the Joffrey Ballet) of Anna Karenina has been a long time coming to the Melbourne stage. Originally scheduled as part of the 2020 season, the closures of the pandemic have left this ballet in the wings for two years.  At first glance, the epic Russian story of love, lust and loss seems the perfect vehicle with which to launch the season.