Reviews

For their Season 3, 2017, Lilydale Athenaeum has chosen the ambitious Cole Porter musical High Society. Based on the play The Philadelphia Story and MGM musical of the same name, this was certainly an undertaking by an amateur theatre company, even one as well established as the Athenaeum.

Set in Philadelphia in 1938,High Society tells the tale of Tracy Lord, a rich woman (by family wealth), ecstatic about her impending marriage to George Kittredge, a successful, yet boring,industrialistmanager.

Lumina Theatre Co is a relatively new company based at Aquinas College in Ringwood, and this was their second production. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I got was a lot of youthful energy from the mainly young cast, and a lot of pathos, as the drama was fully realised.

Sets were minimal, with a cyclone fence and walkway at the back and various pieces of furniture moved on and off as appropriate. This worked well because of the excellent lighting.

There are a few moments in Opera Australia’s triumphant production of My Fair Lady that warrant spontaneous applause. A tableau at the Ascot races, with resplendent blacks and whites; rows and rows of chandeliers flown in for the glorious ballroom scene; and, of course, the most fun number of the show, “Get Me to the Church on Time”, set in a very realistic Covent Gardens markets. Rarely has a musical looked so good on an Australian stage.

Adding to music from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake a sequence of disparate pieces by Einaudi, Morricone, and Elgar, Melbourne Ballet Company’s director and resident choreographer Simon Hoy has created a surprisingly integrated soundtrack to which he has choreographed a visually charming and often arresting ballet.