Reviews

With the hundredth anniversary of Gallipoli this year, there are none of us left to even give a second thought on how Australian Society suffered and survived during, and in the follow up to World War 1. It is left to playwrights, like Kevin Summers, to prick our consciences (and our memories) by reaching us emotionally through drama. Patient 12 is not an easy play to perform or watch. A young soldier, with his face blown off, is in a Melbourne Repat hospital and is going to die. There is no way to identify him except for an initial tattooed on his chest.

Christopher Marlowe’s account of Edward II of England condenses the twenty turbulent years of his reign into an exposé of love and lust, politics and power.

Fie on love that,

Hatchet death and hate.’Kent: Scene Act V, Sc iv

Director Terry Karabelas: “Marlowe explores how excess and passion always lead to catastrophe and destruction. (It is) an historical tragedy…that transcends time and speaks to our contemporary world where the personal is political and the political is always driven by the personal”.

If we’re talking 'immersive theatre', Sutherland Memorial School of Arts might well be the ideal choice of venue for the musical Gypsy, based on the memoirs of striptease artiste Gypsy Rose Lee. Certainly it fits the stripped back, small-scale vision which director Michael Astill discusses in his program notes.

When a show is fit to bursting with its own unique mixture of ambitious ideas, literate language, humour, poignance, creativity, vitality, and outright oddities, it would look like an easy recommendation, yes? There will be those who are thoroughly delighted and entirely thrilled by Amber, as well as others who - like this reviewer - are more cautious in their enthusiasm and measured in their praise.