Reviews

This year the Brisbane Festival has showcased a brilliant range of musical acts – none so eclectic as Mzaza, whose individual band members have cultural heritage that mirrors Australia’s waves of settlers from Greece, Latvia, Bosnia and France. This band of free-spirited World musicians have a playlist that mixes their original jazzy and internationally inspired compositions with covers from writers as discombobulating as Serge Gainsbourg. The result is a blend as refreshing as a Bobo Parisian spiked with a cool shot of Ouzo.

Lily Fish is a phenomenon.  She is astonishing.  She is a comedienne, a mime, an acrobat and a chameleon.  In this show, the stage is totally bare, and the house lights don’t even dim.  There’s just Lily Fish and a plank.  Her character – and storyteller - Jofus – is dressed more or less as a clown and the ‘plank’ is a roughly 60 cm piece of wood.  Those are her resources.  There is some minimal narration – in a strange ‘clown’ voice and with lightning quick audience interactions – but the story,

HMDS’ production of the ever-popular musical Guys and Dolls by Frank Loesser, Jo Swirling and Abe Burrows, based on the stories of Damon Runyon, was very entertaining. Particularly well cast, the production team brought their shared vision of the piece together well.

What to say?  Just Us Girls (or as the website has it, juSt uS GirLS) is sort of absurdist stream-of-consciousness mix of #MeToo meets Dada by way of cultural theory, poetry and vaudeville.  That formulation comes from The Companion.  After the show she said, ‘I don’t envy you reviewing that one…’