Reviews

Albert Camus, well aware of the imminent victory of the fascist Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War across one border, and the rise of Hitler and the Nazis across another, began writing Caligula in 1938.  The play underwent extensive revisions and was not staged until 1945 – by which time Camus had lived through the Nazi Occupation and played an important role in the French resistance.  The French public too could not ignore the collaboration of the Vichy regime with the Nazis, and the death camps and destruction across Europe.  The play, then very much of it

Harbour Theatre’s In Sight of the Sea is a locally written play, set just up the road in Cottesloe, in a shared apartment “in sight of the sea”.

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.