Reviews

WAAPA’s Third Year Acting Students present Noël Coward's Present Laughter, in a gorgeous looking, charming production, that is clever and engaging.

Kelly Fragon has designed an attractive pre-war set that is lavish and luxurious, with beautiful attention to detail. Costuming (a team led by Katy Rasaiah and J. Orman) perfectly sets the era, and we are transported to 1939 to a world that is somehow devoid of rising war concerns and tensions - a world that probably never existed - escapist and elite.

The Western Australian Academy of Performing Art’s annual ‘big’ musical at The Regal Theatre is many people’s only contact with WAAPA students before they graduate. This very impressive, very tight production of 42nd Street showcases WAAPA talents beautifully, and is a wonderful public relations exercise as well as being a top-notch production.

The Athenaeum is the perfect Theatre for this brilliantly staged work.   All production values are in place to facilitate suspension of disbelief and immersion in the creepy ‘old world fear’ of a ghostly apparition.   The marvelous picture book set by John Kerr with lots of quirks and illusions is really the fourth character of this stunningly eerie production.

Sport for Jove’s acclaimed outdoor production of Cyrano in 2013 here returns, now indoors and well spread across the thrust stage of Sydney’s York Theatre, Seymour Centre, before touring beyond.  The cast is mostly the same but director Damien Ryan now also fills the shoes of Yalin Ozucelik in the lead.