Reviews

There is an active movement in South East Queensland to produce entertainment more up-market and away from the obvious. Bleached Arts successfully accomplished this with its first Bleach Festival early this year, and we see it in productions like Cockfight by The Farm, and the stunning Blanc de Blanc (reviewed last month).

In her 2015 playscript Boys Will Be Boys, established Australian playwright Melissa Bubnic has penned an anti-fable focusing almost entirely on soulless corporate vampires who get what they don’t deserve.  (And if a couple of them evidence thoughts and feelings beyond their naked ambitions, it doesn’t alter their decisions or what they didn’t deserve.)

Therry’s latest production It Could Be Any of Us is all about the details. Experienced director Kerrin White has looked beyond the text to draw out every satirical moment and bring us a fast-paced look at this family of failures.

The action takes place in the old English country home of the Chalke family; the rundown residence is home to a composer, a writer, a painter, a detective and a wayward teenager. Set design by White is so authentic you can almost smell the mildew caused by the leaking roof, while Mary Formosa has also done a fine job in dressing the set.

We all meet a lot of characters in life. If you’re a writer, why not create a play about them?

Atlantis is a new work by American-born, Australian-based Lally Katz. It is semi-autobiographical, inspired by people she’s met in life. “Hi everyone, I’m Lally Katz,” says an actor (the brilliant Amber McMahon) as she steps outside the first scene of the play. She tells us “almost everything” here is true and every character based on a real person.