February, 2012

When theatre gets described as like television, it’s usually in the pejorative sense. Maybe it’s time to move on. In an age of HBO, television has been the medium with which the finest writers, actors and directors have expressed some of the best stories of the past decade. This production of The Wild Duck, adapted [...]

It should have been a cracker. A sharp and deeply personal script. A talented and experienced cast. Sadly for the audience, The Seed is more a damp squib. The story is promising. Three generations of the Maloney family — daughter, father and grandfather — come together to celebrate their collective birthday in a living room [...]

Marry Packed To The Rafters (or even Neighbours) with Beaches and you’ve got Rita Kalnejais’ Babyteeth, directed by Eamon Flack. With set designer Robert Cousins and lighting designer Niklas Pajanti, especially, as well as an interesting cast, Flack has done his level best to get the most out of it. Composer Alan John and sound designer Steve Francis [...]

It comes as a surprise That Pretty Pretty (or, to give it its charming subtitle, The Rape Play) was written by a woman, Sheila Callaghan. Workhorse Theatre, in its debut production, presents Pretty’s Australian premiere; a brave choice, perhaps, but, to be more cynical, one calculated to try and inspire the kind of controversy the [...]

Out-of-towners is this yours? kicks off the Tamarama Rock Surfers 2012 season with Best We Forget, a kind of ode to remembrance, or the lack thereof. As you enter the theatre you note a long, long table, of the kind you might see at the UN, or in a polling-booth or, more likely, at a [...]

The Year Of Magical Wanking. Could there be a more romantic Valentine’s Day date? In honour of Mardi Gras, thisispopbaby presents Neil Watkins’ extraordinary one-man show, directed by Phillip McMahon, a deeply personal epistle of a drug-fuelled, sex-crazed life with HIV. Molested as an eight-year-old child, Watkins, even in conceding the inappropriateness, confesses he enjoyed [...]

It’s the second Scottish production I’ve seen recently (after the Sydney Festival’s Beautiful Burnout) and both have teetered on the need for subtitles. I jest. Well, mostly. Midsummer is just as billed: a play with songs. Not a musical. The songs here insinuate themselves much more subtly, unlike the bolts from the blue that tend [...]

At three hours, Mozart’s adaptation of La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro is a trial for atrophying posterior muscles, but librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, Amadeus and Andrews ease the pain; analgesia for the soul. I’ll confess: in the opening moments, I was a little apprehensive. Fluorescent lighting. A starkly modern, whitewashed, symmetrical set, [...]

“A classic Broadway musical for a new generation,” goes the pitch. The Kids are certainly familiar with the tunes; Glee has bred familiarity (and perhaps contempt) of this show, like other dusty Broadway staples, with its covers of Sing! and show-stopping ballad What I Did For Love illegally downloaded to iPods everywhere. But they probably [...]