Reviews

Bodies, blood and chills haunt Shake and Stir’s creepy melodramatic adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic-horror novel. In recent years we’ve not been short of vampires on the small or big screen; Twilight, True Blood, The Vampire Diaries and Buffy, but Stoker’s original is the gold-standard and Nelle Lee and Nick Skubij keep closely to it in their lean storytelling.

The 1812 Theatre tackle another television to stage adaptation in their season this year – this time it is the Australian premiere of timeless UK sit-com Last of the Summer Wine, where we see Foggy, Clegg and Compo being reunited for one last riotous and farcical adventure.

From 1983 to 2010, the TV sit-com written by Roy Clarke was set and filmed in and around Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, England, and centered on a trio of old men and their youthful misadventures;

This National Theatre Live revival (if that’s the word) of Edward Albee’s famous 1962 play features a stellar cast: Imelda Staunton as Martha, Conleth Hill as George, Imogen Poots as Honey and Luke Treadaway as Nick.  Any production of this play, however, can’t help but aspire to escape the memory of the 1966 movie adaptation (by Ernest Lehman) for which director Mike Nichols had the inspired idea of casting Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.  Comparisons may be odious, but in this case, they are rather inevitable.

After the Dance is perhaps the least well known of Terence Rattigan’s plays. Set in the years between the Wars, the play censures the wealthy “bright young things” who flout the foreboding signs of unrest in Europe in favour of drinking and partying. The criticism is gentle, exposing the fears and flaws that hide beneath the brittle personas that the characters assume.