Reviews

Head Over Heels

Songs by The Go-Go’s, adapted by James Magruder. Original Book by Jeff Whitty. WAAPA Third Year Music Theatre. Directed by Melanie Hillman. The Roundhouse, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, WA. Jun 7-13, 2024

This WA premiere was directed with a sense of fun by Melanie Hillman, performed by WAAPA Third Year Music Theatre students, and designed, built, and crewed by WAAPA Production and Design students.

Horizon

Bangarra Dance Theatre. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. 11 June to 13 July, 2024

In Bangarra’s remarkable history, its second artistic director Frances Rings takes a logical next step by forging a collaboration with First Nation artists from another country. From across the Tasman, Maori choreographer Moss Te Ururangi Patterson elicits from 16 Indigenous Australians an enthralling dance voyage through the winds, waters and people of his home country around Lake Taupo in Aotearoa.   

Little Squirt

Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Darby James & Quiet RIOT. Quartet Bar, Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide. SA June 14 – 15, 2024

What do you do when you are confronted with a barrage of sperm donation adds on social media and it’s the COVID lockdown? You have nothing else to do so why not go ahead and do it?

Little Squirt is the award-winning comedy cabaret about the process of sperm donation, featuring all original songs by musical comedian, Darby James.

Watershed: The Death of Doctor Duncan

Composed by Joseph Twist. Libretto by Alana Valentine and Chistos Tsiolkas. Opera Australia. Directed by Neil Armfield. Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. June 14 - 16, 2024

There were lots of words recited in this oratorio that were unfamiliar to the stage of the Joan Sutherland Theatre. For starters “poofter” and “cum” don’t normally appear in the translation of operas.

Also, strikingly different to regular operas was a tight, engaging, contemporary story where not a word was wasted. Sadly, this stunning and beautiful work is only on stage for four performances, after its initial season at the Adelaide Festival.

Swing on This

Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. June 14-15th 2024

Swing on This opened their 10th Adelaide Cabaret season 70-minute show to a packed, adoring audience at the Dunstan Playhouse. The self-described ‘kings of swing’ features Luke Kennedy (The Voice Australia, The Ten Tenors), Matt Lee (Frozen, Mary Poppins), and Ben Mingay (Shrek, Sweeney Todd) and new member Bert LaBonté (Moulin Rouge, The Book of Mormon).

Chat 10 Looks 3 Live

Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 14 June 2024

The Adelaide Cabaret Festival continues to surprise: who would have thought we’d witness the ABC’s Leigh Sales AM singing Chicago’s ‘Class’ with the Festival’s director, Virginia Gay? And mighty fine singing it was too, and an excellent opening to a live (and lively!) edition of the popular podcast from Sales and Annabel Crabb.

Lambs

Free Agents Youth Theatre. Goodwood Theatre and Studios, Goodwood, SA. June 13-15, 2024

The future of theatre is ensured if it is left to performers of the young artists of the Free Agents Youth Theatre! Lambs is an extremely powerful piece of theatre that is sure to move any theatregoer.

Written by Director Sean Riley in collaboration with his students, it explores the residents of a fictionalised country town named St Jude during World War I, when many boys and young men sought an adventure across the world by signing up to the Australian Imperial Forces despite being below the minimum age of enlistment.

Romeo and Juliet

By William Shakespeare. Atherton Performing Arts. Directed by Sarah Riber and Geo Toner. June 14-23, 2024

Set in the violent streets of Verona, Italy, this timeless play is brought to life predominantly by young-adult females immersed in the language of Shakespeare. And what a wonderful interpretation this version is.

Acted on a dystopian, post-apocalyptic set, with the rival families dressed in modern red and blue clothing, the action moves rapidly from scene to scene against a backdrop of clever lighting and haunting music.

The Swallows

By Sandra Fiona Long, co-created with Helen Morse, Ria Soemardjo & Helen Mountfort. Kath Papas Productions (Kath Papas & Taka Takiguchi). La Mama HQ, Carlton. 6 – 16 June 2024

Here is a tale of a woman’s (Helen Morse) relation to Nature: her childlike immersion in it – mud between her toes, skin red from icy water - her delicate, wondering observation of nature’s variety, the sunlight through the trees, the sensual feel of a breeze on her skin, her awareness of its silence filled with sounds – birds hidden and seen, the rustle of leaves, the trickle-flow of water – all as she walks and jumps from rock to rock and explores along beside Innocence Creek…  Her own little vulnerable world.  And then the story tells of her

Flo & Joan

Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 12-15 June, 2024

Rosie and Nicola Dempsey are self-deprecating, self-proclaimed, singing, spinster sisters. And that’s not even the most alliterated line in the show. They sing and talk – frequently straying off-topic – and keep the packed theatre entertained with a wonderful combination of biting lyric, supreme musicality (jazz on a recorder, anyone?) and sublime harmonies.

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