Reviews

IT WAS a tranquil and beautiful setting – a magnificent green amphitheatre that framed the orchestra and audience on a beautiful mild winter’s afternoon for Sunday’s performance of the Barrier Reef Orchestra in Queen’s Gardens.

Presented by the Australian Festival of Chamber Music, the annual free concert was emceed by Steve Price.

To many the word “Arlington” evokes pictures of the thousands of white headstones guarding thousands of American souls lost to wars since 1861. It’s a dark picture – and Enda Walsh’s play of that name is similarly dark. He conjures a dystopian society beyond 1984 or Brave New World or Severance that interrogates its citizens and leaves them empty of their dreams in locked rooms in high tower blocks with open windows tempting their will to live.

It has been over two decades since we have seen Breaker Morant on stage in Perth, with the last incarnation also directed by Garry Lawrence, that time for Playlovers. Not easy to cast, with over a dozen men needed, this historical drama is both historical documentary and a courtroom drama. 

Noël Coward once said, “If you’re a star, you should behave like one. I always have.”

Present Laughter is arguably one of the pinnacles of Coward’s work. Written in 1939, The story concerns a famous stage star Garry Essendine, styled on Coward himself. While planning a tour of a play in Africa, he has affairs with a debutante and his producer's boyfriend, meets with an insane playwright, deals with his secretary's demands as well as those of his ex-wife.