Reviews

A play about football needs a bit of an explanation for a theatre audience. David Williams makes it clear this is about “the game with the round ball that you play with your feet, sometimes referred to as ‘soccer’”. He tells us that Sydney FC supporters are called “smurfs” because they don sky blue and white; “Wanderland”, if you didn’t know, is the nickname for the home ground of their cross-city rivals: the Western Sydney Wanderers.

Geelong Repertory Theatre’s The Savages of Wirramai confronts its audience about sexual abuse.

While Rob Savage (Philip Besancon), the father of the Savage family, is proud of his courage and dutifulness in fighting in the Vietnam War, he fails in his duty to protect his daughter Cassie (Stacey Carmichael) from sexual abuse.

Under the guidance of Melanie Smart, the Gold Coast’s newest theatre company has staged Leoncavallo’s short opera Pagliacci for their inaugural production and what a great choice it proved to be.

With a strong principal line-up of Patrick Oxley as Canio, Melanie Smart as Nedda and (Musical Director) David McNeven stepping in at short notice as Tonio, and with the support of the minor principals and small chorus the music was well sung.

Black Swan State Theatre Company's world premiere of The Lighthouse Girl by Hellie Turner is adapted from the Dianne Wolfer books Lighthouse Girl and Light Horse Boy, and is a beautiful telling of a lovely, if sad, Australian First World War story.

Set on a single set, an inspired design by Lawrie Cullen Tait - a rocky outcrop that is predominantly the barren Breaksea Island - but with the assistance of lighting designed by Joe Lui and sound by Brett Smith, it becomes the lighthouse cottage, rural Victoria, Egypt and Anzac Cove.