Reviews

Alan Ayckbourn’s first successful play takes place during a summer weekend in the bed-sitting room, Ginny’s London flat and on the garden patio of Sheila and Philip’s home in Buckinghamshire, outside London. This simple setting makes for a free-flowing production to carry the intriguing relationships to an end, relatively speaking. The play opens in the flat of Greg (Connor Kenny) and Ginny (Staff King), a co-habiting couple, with Ginny the more sexually experienced. Flowers, odd slippers - what is really the case?

This is a bloodcurdlingly brilliant performance which dazzles visually and musically.

As is the fashion for new productions from Opera Australia, digital scenario is the tool used to sweep the audience from one moment to the next. This is very handy in the opening scene when a chorus of soldiers are told about something horrific which happened fifteen years previously.

In traditional productions audience members must read the subtitles to get the gist of the story.

Writing a musical play is ambitious. Getting it on to the stage can be difficult. Doing both yourself can be … challenging, testing, tiring  … especially during two years of pandemic-instigated illness and restrictions. But, if you are as determined and resolute as Lucy Matthews, it can also be exhilarating.

First, accept the premise: identical twin boys are born on the same day in Syracuse to Emilia (Leilani Loau) and Egeon (Maitland Schnaars), a merchant; both boys are called Antipholus.  On the same day, another set of identical twin boys is born; Egeon buys/adopts them from their penniless mother as ‘bondsmen’ to serve his twins and calls them both Dromio.