By June Walker Rogers. Hobart Repertory Theatre Company. Directed by Mark Morgan. Playhouse Theatre. November 3-18 2017
There are those who believe musical theatre should be vacuous and undemanding and then there are the rest of us. Yet, Playing the Palace is a flummery that makes significant demands of its audience. It requires an unusual degree of suspension of disbelief, principally, to accept that a play about a theatre is set on a stage partly dressed as a theatre. Ghosts are presaged by the augury of a flickering light and their presence accepted. Every line is a tenuous cue to a song and sometimes the songs just appear like the ghosts.
The Basement (Sideshow). Arts Centre Gold Coast. 10th-11th November 2017, and touring.
Is it just synchronicity that five musical legends all died (mostly by their own hand) at the age of 27? Is that the age at which we have to own who we are and quit hiding behind the mask of being a “kid”? For some that transition to adulthood, seriousness, responsibility, is just too hard to make. On the ‘plus’ side, an early death brings a kind of immortality to performers who might otherwise have been swept up in the juggernaut of fame and ultimately replaced and forgotten.
Book and Lyrics By Eric Idle. Music by John Du Prez. Bankstown Theatre Company. Directed by Simon Fry. Musical Direction by Ian Buchanan. Choreography by Lauren Butler. Bankstown Arts Centre. November 10 – 19, 2017
What can one say about Spamalot, except that it is totally ridiculous, as one would expect from a Monty Python idea. This musical, “lovingly ripped off” from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail, does great justice to the craziness of the genre, and this production by Bankstown Theatre Company lovingly embraces the whole idea.
Presented by Platonic Music. The Space: Dunstan Playhouse (SA). Friday 10 November To Saturday 11 November, 2017.
The Carnival of Lost Souls is a macabre yet rather engaging piece of ‘circus theatre’ in the spirit, if not scale of Cirque du Soliel. The setting for the rather loose narrative that involves desire, betrayal and revenge, is an old gothic 19th Century Music Hall.
By Barry Dickins. Theatre iNQ, South Townsville. World Premiere. Nov 9 – 19, 2017
As the audience streams in to the theatre, two old women are sitting on the stage in a typically 1950s kitchen – featuring a wooden table, a Kooka stove and an ancient Kelvinator refrigerator. What follows is a spirallingly surreal conversation which covers their lives, their ideals, death, children, their increasing loss of mind and memory and one of the funniest and most tragic shows you will ever see.
Written & Directed by Shane Pike. Wax Lyrical Productions. Brisbane Powerhouse. 9-12 Nov 2017.
Shane Pike’s Nineteen is the second in a trilogy of plays exploring masculinity in young Australian men. This world premiere performance was brutally honest and frequently confronting.
Constructed from real-life stories gathered over several years, the play specifically focuses on four young men who are all living together in a share house. They swore on oath at 11 to be best friends forever but at 17 cracks are starting to show in the friendship.
By Anton Chekhov, adapted by Andrew Upton. Sydney Theatre Company. Director: Kip Williams The Drama Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company. 6 November – 16 December 2017
There is much that is familiar about Andrew Upton’s reworking of Three Sisters at The Drama Theatre, and much that is profoundly strange. There are the sisters alright — Olga Prozorov, at 28 the eldest, a provincial school teacher; Masha, short tempered, disappointed in marriage; Irina, youngest and desperate to return to Moscow and taste true freedom. But the time is Now, or thereabouts, not the 19th century. Duels can no longer be picked and fought. The town’s garrison doesn’t march out of town to a jaunty band.
Music by Duncan Sheik. Book & Lyrics by Steven Sater. Based upon the play by Frank Wedekind. Directed by Hayley Horton. Stirling Community Theatre, Stirling. November 10-25, 2017
Looking back over their incredible 45-year history of putting on shows in South Australia (which is detailed in an exhaustive list at the back of the program for their latest production), one thing that the Hills Musical Company deserves to be praised for is their willingness to take risks in choosing material.
Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. Fab Nobs Theatre Inc. 33 Industrial Place, Bayswater (Vic). Oct 27 – Nov 18, 2017.
Welcome to the 1920’s era of booze, jazz, murder, greed, corruption… (well, you know the rest! Jazz hands!).
For their final season of the year, Fab Nobs present Chicago, a musical that requires all performers to be triple threats in order to maintain the fervent musical numbers and stylized flair of the script.
