Reviews

The Bridal Lament 哭嫁歌

By Rainbow Chan. Director Tessa Leong. Contemporary Asian Australian Performance, supported by Sydney Festival. Riverside Theatres Parramatta, NSW. 23-26 Jan, 2025

The Bridal Lament was a public performance of grief, a ritual where Weitou brides expressed their bitterness about arranged marriages and patriarchal rule. As such, its message reaches across cultures and generations. Rainbow Chan learnt of the ritual in her search to find out more about her Weitou heritage … and the result is a moving song cycle that reveals the multi-disciplinary artist’s incredible ability to draw past and present together through music, movement and storytelling.

Creative Juices

By Timothy Christopher Ryan. FringeWorld. The Lotterywest Spiegeltent, The Pleasure Garden, Northbridge, WA. Jan 22-30, 2025

Creative Juices is a unique show at FringeWorld and an excellent way to finish an evening at Fringe. Playing in the Pleasure Garden, hosted by an effervescent and highly personable Timothy Ryan, this is a fabulous blend of cabaret, comedy and the wildest art class you’ve ever attended. 

I Watched Someone Die on Tik Tok

By Charlotte Otton. FringeWorld. Rehearsal Room 1, State Theatre Centre of Western Australia. Jan 21-25, 2025

Charlotte Otton’s Solo Show I Watched Someone Die on Tik Tok is presented by Charlotte Otton and Lazy Yarns for State of Play as part of FringeWorld. Combining monologue, songs and audiovisual, Charlotte looks at her obsession with the darker side of social media - especially Tim Tok.

La Traviata

By Giuseppe Verdi. Opera Australia. Director: Sarah Giles. Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. 23 Jan - 27 Mar, 2025

La Traviata – The Fallen Woman – is the story of Violetta, a courtesan dying of consumption and her adoring Alfredo, who forsakes his noble family for love, only to lose Violetta when his father convinces her that she should sacrifice their love to sustain the social position of the family.

Julius Caesar

By William Shakespeare. Atherton Performing Arts. Directed by Sarah Riber. January 24th-February 2nd, 2025

Shakespeare’s plays can be produced in many different settings, often far from their traditional productions. This Atherton Performing Arts Junior Theatre version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is no exception.

Atherton’s Julius Caesar is performed on a well-designed, dystopian set by the actors in futuristic costumes carrying guns of various descriptions. The play is accompanied by jangling music and, surprisingly, an old Doris Day song.

Katie Noonan: Jeff Buckley’s Grace

Sydney Festival. Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1 Theatre, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. Jan 21 – 25, 2025.

Katie Noonan first saw her musical hero at the age of 18 when Jeff Buckley and his band had a modest tour stop on the Gold Coast. She was hooked. It was 1995, just two years before he drowned, and left us with his one and only album. Grace was famously a slow starter but after a decade, the album and Buckley’s astonishing voice and musicianship were celebrated worldwide by fans and industry legends.

SPARK

By Ryan Henry. Frenzy Theatre Co. Midsumma Festival. Theatre Works, St Kilda. 21 – 25 January 2025

Director Belle Hansen certainly knows how to put on a show.  Here, performances sparkle, the choreography – performed by an excellent cast – is excellent, and she fills. the wide but simple set with so much invention and activity that at times you don’t know where to look.  SPARK is a sort of fable-dream-nightmare about how the search for love is entwined with – or disastrously compromised by – internet technology.

Thirty-Six

By Jo Clifford & Bayley Turner. Directed by Kitan Petkovski. Produced by Ro Bright & Cameron Lukey. Presented by fortyfivedownstairs in association with Bullet Heart Club. fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. 21 January – 2 February 2025.

In a renewed political era of attacks on the transgender community Thirty-Six is a particularly important, timely and poignant performance. This is a deeply personal story of both the internal psychological struggles and the external social struggles associated with transgender experiences. The performance manages a range of sensitive issues such as transphobia, social alienation and suicide, all addressed in a candid and sometimes confronting manner.

The Good, The Bad and the Hardy

By Hardy Croucher. FringeWorld. The Laugh Resort at the Shoe, Yagan Square, Perth, WA. Jan 18-25, 2025

The youngest comedian at FringeWorld, eighteen-year-old Hardy Croucher’s show plays a “hard to sell” afternoon slot at The Laugh Resort at the Shoe, in Yagan Square. A young man from Albany, he is well presented and likeable.

Baby Shark and Tails of the Seven Seas

By Chris Vuk. FringeWorld / Music Makers Foundation. The Theatre at Planet Royale, Lake St, Northbridge, WA. Jan 18 - Feb 2, 2024

Baby Shark and Tails of the Seven Seas, presented by the Music Makers Foundation as part of FringeWorld, had sellout seasons at both the Edmonton and Edinburgh Fringe, and I would have thought, given its recognisable branding, that similar sales would be happening here.

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