Reviews

Jude Perl has four Green Room Awards and a Best Cabaret Melbourne Fringe 2018 Award.  Her songs are witty, intricate, clever, ironic, rather self-mocking and musically sophisticated (could that be a problem?) and she writes and sings them all herself.  So, with this show, we might wonder why isn’t she a star?  Why aren’t her ‘greatest hits’, actual hits?  These are questions she asks too – and answers - in her very first song in this show, a song that also asks, ‘why can’t people respect me?’ 

Michael Gow’s classic Australian play has been given a light and airy production by Timothy Hall with the third year graduating drama students from Griffith University.

Gow’s play, set in 1967, about three families from different socio-economic backgrounds who converge on the Gold Coast for their annual summer holidays, has been revived constantly and studied by at least two generations of school children since its premiere in 1986.

Do not be misled by the rather twee title.  In 1901 and into 1902, two intelligent, articulate young women, Isobel (Meg Hickey) and Henrietta (Maeve Hook) write to each other.  They’re friends in the remote rural town of Toobloodyfaraway in the wheat belt of south-west Victoria.  At first, their letters are brief and bright girlish notes.  But then they are separated when Henrietta moves to Melbourne. 

In The Third Culture Kid, Mashood Qureshi, also known as MC Emkew, tells the story of his life so far through spoken word and original rap songs. This coming-of-age story has universal themes, with deeply personal insights into the challenges Emkew faced because he was a Pakistani Muslim migrant kid growing up in Australia.