Reviews

Carmina Burana

By Carl Orff. Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Orchestra. Conductor Brett Weymark. The Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. 9 September, 2023

It’s a sunny spring Saturday afternoon in Sydney! The harbour is sparkling, the city bustling. Crowds chat and stroll or snap photographs on the forecourt of the Opera House.

Inside The House, in the Concert Hall, over 400 singers fill the balconies behind and above 74 musicians on the stage. And an audience of over 2,000 wait expectantly for conductor Brett Weymark to enter and introduce yet another exceptional performance by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Parramatta’s River City Voices.

Birds of Tokyo

In concert with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra. QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane. 8th September, 2023

Fans of Australian contemporary rock group 'Birds of Tokyo' flocked to Brisbane's Arts Centre last night to see the group in action, along with the added benefit of an orchestral accompaniment, their second concert with the QSO. After the successful release of six albums since their inception in 2004, plenty of airplay on Triple J and a string of awards to boot, they have become one of Australia's most popular groups of this kind of genre.

Pleasures Of Versailles

By Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Pinchgut Opera. Sydney Recital Hall. Sep 9 & 10, 2023

Composing something pithy, beautiful and appropriate for the Sun King couldn’t have been easy.  Marc-Antoine Charpentier hit gold with these two short operas created for the private soirees which Louis XIV held in his apartments at Versailles from 1682. 

In some magical programming, Pinchgut Opera artfully stages them with five singers backed by Erin Helyard on harpsichord and the Orchestra of the Antipodes.

The Importance of Being Earnest

By Oscar Wilde. Sydney Theatre Company. Roslyn Packer Theatre. September 9 – October 14, 2023

Oscar Wilde was sentenced for indecency to hard labour in Reading Gaol within months of his most famous comedy opening in 1895.  It’s the dark shadow behind The Importance of Being Earnest, with its hilarious mockery of the British upper classes and their willing ignorance and hypocrisy. 

Wilde’s queer eye also turns the comic screw on how trapped they are in their own strait-jacked (heterosexual) conventions of love and marriage.  Their revenge of sort soon followed.

SLUTNIK ™ 2: Planet of the Incels

Created & produced by flick. Production & script dramaturgy Enya Daly. FLICKFLICKCITY. Theatre Works, St Kilda. 7 – 16 September 2023

 

SLUTNIK™ 2 is (obviously) the sequel to SLUTNIK™ 1 and fans of SLUTNIK™ 1 – of whom there are many, judging by the gleeful opening night audience for SLUTNIK™ 2 – will know the backstory.

For beginners, in SLUTNIK™ 1, one hundred years ago a legendary crew of lesbian space cannibals [plus robot MOTHERBOARD] left Earth to escape the patriarchy. 

Wise Children

By Lucy Rice, based on the novel by Angela Carter. WAAPA Graduating Acting Students. Directed by Adam Mitchell. The Roundhouse, WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley WA. Sep 8-14, 2023

WAAPA’s Graduating Acting Students are an exceptionally strong cohort - especially the women - and this production of Wise Children is a great choice to showcase their talents, as well as the strong skills of WAAPA’s Production and Design Students.

Liminal

By Stephanie Francis. Old Nick Company. Emma Skalicky (Director), Grace Roberts (Lighting Design), Morgan Steven (Set), Owen Francis and Stephanie Francis (Sound Design). The Peacock Theatre, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart. September 8th – 16th, 2023

Humans don't like the liminal. We recoil from the “not quite” human of the stray hair or abandoned toenail, but the liminal space created in this new work by Stephanie Francis is a lacuna in which to consider human existence when it is not quite one thing or the other.

Accidental Death of an Anarchist

By Dario Fo. Presented by Stirling Players. Stirling Community Theatre, SA. 8-23 September 2023

This hilarious absurdist comedy is a well-polished production that has lost none of its humour or meaning in the fifty plus years since it was written.

Park Bench Series

By Noel O’Neill. Maverick Theatre Productions. Directed by Noel O’Neill. Old Mill Theatre, South Perth. WA. Aug 30 – Sep 10, 2023

Maverick Theatre Productions present this new series of plays set on a park bench, written, and directed by Noel O’Neill. Like its predecessor, this production is a collection of six plays that take place on a park bench, somewhere in the world.

Wicked

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz. Book by Winnie Holzman. Based on the novel by Gregory Maguire. Produced by John Frost for Crossroads Live. Sydney Lyric Theatre. Opening Night: September 7, 2023.

Another short day in the Emerald City, but this time with more flying monkeys, new colourful LED lighting and a joke about TikTok, which wasn’t invented when the last professional season took place almost a decade ago.

Wicked is back with a few small updates and not a moment too soon for the producers. In a difficult time for theatre, Wicked is a rolled gold hit (or perhaps more appropriately labelled a rolled greenback hit) which sparkles from the inclusion of bright new leads and the deft hands of experienced actors.

Subscribe to our E-Newsletter, buy our latest print edition or find a Performing Arts book at Book Nook.