Reviews

Billy Buckett plays like a Cliff Richard movie of the sixties – a simple teenage love story, a score of original rock ‘n’ roll songs, and a fresh-faced cast continually bursting into energetic song-and-dance. It’s a recipe for success and this company, mostly holdovers from Beenleigh Theatre Group’s 2013 production of the show, had fun once again recreating the suede shoes and peddle-pusher era.

Society is more circus than cabaret, but it’s great fun and an hour of amazement and gasp-inducing feats of skill.  A spiegeltent is the perfect setting, with its big top roof and the audience arrayed on three sides of the thrust stage.  Ebullient MC Francesco Minniti (who also directs the show and later does some magic tricks) has some patter about New Orleans and the dark arts, but this gloss on proceedings turns out to be really neither here nor there – except maybe as a justification for the show’s great, funky music, chosen by Music Director Kara Ci

A bus shelter in New Jersey, USA, is where five key incidents play out in the life of a worn but fiery Polish immigrant woman, Darja (pronounced ‘Daria’ – Gabrielle Rose-Carter).  As indifferent traffic passes in the night and buses come and go, Darja plays out her encounters – in the present, with lover Tommy (Alex Tsitsopoulos), with a Good Samaritan teenage drug dealer, Vic (Will Atkinson), and in the past with husband Maks (Anthony Scudi).  Via the dense, hyper-naturalistic, punchy dialogue, we piece together Darja’s story.

Papakura Theatre Company are well known for producing plays. They have a foyer full of theatre awards for them. Their forte is for comedy.

One Man, Two Guvnors is based on The Servant of Two Master, a comedy by the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni written in 1746.