Reviews

Alison Bechdel (Lucy Maunder) is a cartoonist, writing an autobiographical graphic novel – and so we travel with her, a ghost witness to her past.  It is a story about an American family – a family uniquely unhappy in its own way.  Alison always carries her sketch pad as she watches, and, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with regret, or embarrassment, sometimes with pain, records each memory.  As they become drawings, she asks, ‘Caption?  Caption…?’  And she is stopped, as stumped as we are because no simple caption could be adequate

Artistic Director, Miranda Hill, has steered this project for several years and successfully focused attention on the achievements of queer composers, singers and musicians. The many delightful, sometimes poignant, stories behind these works have been recorded and recounted by Hill in the most entertaining and endearing manner. These events are often an oasis or refuge for individuals whose sexuality is taken to be at odds with the mainstream.

Utopia is a moving and heartfelt play about the refugee experience. Set in Afghanistan, it looks at the reasons for needing to leave the country and the vision of Australia as a Utopia.

Feet First Collective’s This Is Where We Live is a highly poetic, unusually staged production about teenagers in a rural Australian town. Sensitively directed and beautifully acted, this moving play is fulfilling viewing.

What will strike you first is the unusual dialogue style, with some sounds, thoughts and actions verbalised rather than acted. At times it feels more like slam poetry than theatre - an interesting approach given that poetry is one of the play’s major themes. Actors also slip in and out of secondary characters.