Reviews

The cold, antiseptic environment of a hospital waiting room is not the usual setting for a love story. Especially one that playwright, Christopher Harley admits is one “so fragile it might shatter in your hands”. It’s a beautifully touching story about two brothers and a ghost from their childhood that haunts them even as one of them faces death – and a woman who reaches out and won’t give up … because she understands.

Stray Cats Theatre and Mandurah Performing Arts Centre came together in a community partnership for their production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Directed by Karen Francis, it featured musical direction by David Hicks, Choreography by Ashleigh Riley and Megan Doohan, a cast of eighty-eight and an orchestra of thirteen.

La Boîte has again touched on a relevant subject very much a part of the media these days with the introduction of a new playwright, Krystal Sweedman, who, as part of her studies at NIDA, has broached the subject of writing about something her tutor has been encouraging his students to attempt: any topic you wish to avoid. Ms Sweedman chose domestic violence.

A strong sense of danger and menace lurks in this courageous contemporary interpretation of The Bacchae.  It is a vital production, performed in raw and natural way, without artifice, by girls and young women from St Martins Youth Arts Centre. It is apparently the culmination of the results of these young performers being empowered and supported to self-devise around the ‘adult themes’ of The Bacchae.