Reviews

William Kentridge, South Africa’s renowned master of ink and charcoal animations, delivers us a visual and musical feast in his direction and astonishingly kinetic design of Alban Berg’s 1925 opera.  Not that poor Wozzeck himself gets many crumbs. 

Based on Buchner’s fragmentary play a century earlier – arguably the first major tragedy with a common man as its hero – the impoverished Wozzeck is bullied, exploited and taunted; and finally driven mad by the world’s cruelty, murders his unfaithful wife.

A Midnight Visit is a site-specific interactive theatre piece, beautifully immersed into the Old Girls School. A unique theatrical experience, it combines the life of Edgar Allen Poe with a haunted girls school, in a choose your own adventure piece of theatre.

As you wander through three levels of the building, you will discover various elements of the story, meet a variety of characters - all beautifully acted, and visit a variety of locales, as you “journey to the edge of madness”.

The Violent Years (1956) is a campy, all female musical based on an Ed Woods Film, playing at The Blue Room. Gorgeously sung, it is an 'in your face’, aggressive piece, that never takes itself seriously.

Paula is a wealthy, capable A student who is ignored by her parents. In retaliation she forms a girl gang who rob gas stations, rape men and trash their school as they sing 50s rockabilly to riot girl rock.

For most of us, suicides are inexplicable, that utter hopelessness incomprehensible. This moving part physical theatre work from Legs on the Wall and writer/performer Ursula Yovich begins by first listing half a dozen recent teenage Aboriginal suicides.  

Then we meet Mum Rosa (Yovich) living with her boisterous twins, and their best mate Ash, in a country town, but haunted by a Dad who hung himself from the tall gum still there onstage.