Reviews

This is an extraordinarily elegant piece of theatre which addresses its highly confronting and timely topic in a delicate and sensitive manner. The central event which inspired this production is Walley’s own personal experience of witnessing an incident of domestic violence homicide on her street.

These are stories and songs of a daughter’s relationship with her mother: transcending the separation between England and Australia, revealing the differences and commonalities across three generations of mothers.

Campbelltown Theatre Group’s Chicago is a skillfully polished brilliant production that cleverly evokes the style of the late ‘90s professional revival. Permeating this show is a lively pace, dark humour, and sassiness (not the negative-meaning “sass”).

For those unfamiliar with the 90s revival, that was the version which went for the sparse stage and with black being the dominant colour for costumes and set, the “much shorter skirts” being the basic style. Angela Cascarino’s costumes and set brilliantly achieve their goal.

Operating since 2015, Scratch Arts presents itself as Melbourne’s primary contemporary and ‘queer’ production house. Known for workshopping theatre, Murder Off a Duck’s Back presents rather like a sixty-minute workshop piece, and on opening night, it was obvious that the four, multi-character players were still polishing this piece. As they promise, this is a piece for absurdist fans, for absurd it is, right down to the very stylised clown make-up, and the leading ‘lady’ having a beard and moustache.