Reviews

The fifth annual Brisbane Music Festival started on the weekend with four performances in the intimate space of the Salvation Army Brisbane City Temple. The opening gigs showcased the style of events that Artistic Director, Alex Raineri, has programmed for this year – new Australian works (the opening night featured a new composition by Alex Turley in a performance featuring Claire Edwardes on percussion and Alex on piano), early morning music, and late-night sessions in a number of intimate and surprising performance spaces across Brisbane.

Primadonna Productions youth edition of Oklahoma! is much more than OK - a great theatrical celebration and a showcase of emerging talent.

With minimal settings, the large cast fills the stage and is allowed to shine, looking lovely in “of the era” costumes, The show is sympathetically lit by Grace Crawford and Terry Peckover, and sound design is by Michael Rogers.

GRADS’ French Without Tears is a good, old fashioned British comedy, albeit one set in France. In Monsieur Maingot’s French language school, a bevy of young, upper-class British lads have their studies interrupted as they jostle for the affections of the lovely Diana Lake. 

Contrast and comedy come together in this perspicacious production that uses the ‘body swap’ genre to take a shrewd look at social order and the multitude of contemporary issues that stem from ingrained attitudes, classism and media representation and how that affects the way we treat others – be that someone who puts the ‘top coat’ on our nails; or the way we climb ruthlessly over others on the way to reach the ‘glass ceiling’.