Reviews

This fascinating work of interactive theatre allows attendees to participate as much as they feel comfortable doing so. It’s part theatre, part board game, and even partly a lecture. Come with a friend, or make new friends on the evening as you work together while sitting around a very long table to create what could well be the Best Festival Ever. While working together, playing games with consequences for your festival, and interacting with the narrative, you are incidentally learning more about things like systems science, game theory and more.

Supa North’s decision to revive Love Off The Shelf has, once again, proven to be the right decision. Billed as “The Mills & Boon” musical, the flimsy storyline follows the ‘successful’ formula for writing a Romance novel.

Recreating their roles were Dean Doyle, Lee Millward, Liz van Eck and the multi-talented Brian Pamphilon (bringing back memories of Kenneth Williams from the “Carry On” films) revelling in his comic antics as nine decidedly different characters.

Think On Our Selection and the work of Steele Rudd comes to mind, with remembered and loved characters of the Rudd family – Dad, Mother, Dave, Kate, Joe & Sarah. Director Rod Anderson has adapted the Bert Bailey play for this Hobart Repertory Theatre Society production. Although the play has echoes of the Steele Rudd literary characters it is not the same as his stories. The characters we have come to love from film, radio and theatre are all there, with all the classic Dad and Dave jokes and stories.

The Little Fish is an offshoot of the Southern Youth Theatre Ensemble who have gone on to specialise in no-frills productions of The Bard’s work that are typically stripped back to the bare necessities in terms of production values, and usually involve a fair bit of gender-flipped casting in order to accommodate the company’s largely female ensemble.