Reviews

The Last Great Hunt present the 10th Anniversary Production of It’s Dark Outside downstairs at the State Theatre Centre. This beautiful and emotive production - originally commissioned by Perth Theatre Company, and predating the founding of The Last Great Hunt - remains a very moving theatrical experience, visually exciting but gentle and touching.

Playwrights often have a lot to say. Sometimes they try to say it all at once. Sometimes that can be a little confusing, a little overwhelming, even a little disturbing. Such is the case with Blood on the Wattle. It touches on tawdry party politics, climate change, refugee detention, racism, discrimination, misogyny, stalking … even rape. Significant themes. And theatre is a good way to air them. But packaging them into one play means a fair bit of manipulation. And a fair bit for the audience to navigate.

Theatre makers often say that after lockdowns we need something light and bubbly to cheer us up.  I’m not so sure, given some of the crimes recently staged in the name of laughs, including a couple at the Sydney Theatre Company,

Page Rattray’s exquisitely comic version of Blithe Spirit is not among them.  Interestingly, Noël Coward wrote his acclaimed farce during his own lockdown in the depths of wartime in 1941 (and took just six days to complete it).

Les Misérables is a juggernaut of a musical! Originally a novel by Victor Hugo, written in 1862, it was adapted as a sung through musical by Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boubil in 1980 and has become a popular choice for amateur companies.

For the few people who don’t know, Les Mis is the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant, and his desire for redemption, released in 1815 after serving nineteen years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister's starving child.