Reviews

The partnership of man about town and retired media identity, and multi-faceted producer, director, costumer and actor Martha Lott has once again seen a totally different choice of play by Holden Street Inc.; this time, 50 years after his death, to entertain and celebrate legendary Noël Coward’s work.

Beautiful Burnout is a Scottish play that explores the world of boxing - both the passion and love for the sport as well as its potential for damage. Explored through young boxers including a young Cameron Burns, and from the outside from the perspective of Cameron’s mother, this 90-minute play was performed by half of the current WAAPA Third Year Acting Cohort, and crewed, designed, and built by WAAPA Production and Design Students.

‘Rootless cosmopolitans’ was the snide euphemism for Jews in Stalin’s USSR.  Permanent outsiders, people who don’t belong, can’t be trusted – and yet are also greedy, much too powerful, etc.  Every antisemitic cliché that has justified pogroms, persecution, exclusion, the Holocaust and the simmering suspicion and antisemitism that never goes away – and always threatens to break out.  When I was a kid, ‘Jew’ was an insult.  Such is the subject of Ron Elisha’s play.  That and contemporary ‘cancel

The Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of The Gondoliers is well-produced and nicely sung, with a lovely feel.