What in God’s name is a conferencier, anyway? I don’t think I’d so much as stumbled into the term until I attended the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s Barry Humphries’ Weimar Cabaret. Trust the incorrigibly erudite Mr H to be responsible for another notch on the rickety bedpost of my education. Turns out it’s the fit ‘n’ proper term for the MC, in European cabaret. What could be more fitting?

This concert is a veritable museum piece, in which Humphries is both curator and one of the exhibits. Curator, for it is he, the curiouser and curiouser raconteur and intellectual bon vivant (since we’re in the mood for French), who, as I apprehend it, has put together this programme of songs emblematic of that shining sliver of history that preceded the greatest cataclysm to sweep Europe, in the form of the infamous machtergreifung.

Theatres come and theatres go — it’s in the nature of the beast. In Brisbane, we’ve seen the demise of the heritage Princess Theatre in Woolloongabba, and the audience-friendly Suncorp Theatre in the city, and even the iconic La Boite Theatre has moved to flash new premises with the beloved round-house venue now a commercial enterprise.

But somehow the tiny Brisbane Arts Theatre on Petrie Terrace has kept struggling along, riding the waves of audience interest and, since its inception 77 years ago, providing a venue for some of the state’s finest actors to begin their careers.

Fury is the latest play from Joanna Murray-Smith, now in its world premiere season at Wharf 1, directed by Andrew Upton. David Fleischer’s stark design is a guide to the style of performance, which is, on the whole, dry, contained, mannered and, for whatever reasons, antithetical to any semblance of naturalism. Thus, Fleischer’s bank of faux, grey concrete walls, denoting more than architectural coldness.

Perhaps the highly stylised deliveries of key characters are to underscore detachment from reality, which is a key discussion point in the text. That’s my speculation. And I’m sticking to it.

Lally Katz is one brave heart. She’s had one other acting gig: as a rabbit. To take one’s writing to the stage, as a performer, rings a few warning bells. Or it would, if Katz’ writing wasn’t so damn up close and personal and if she didn’t have a larger-than-life personality which more than suffices for stage presence and substitutes for a “character”.

And that’s one of the most interesting aspects of this piece: the confluence between Katz the person and Katz the persona; it’s a fluid merge, which ebbs and flows through the monologue, but errs in favour of a persona. Well, you’ve gotta have a mask, I guess. Happily, it’s a pretty thin veil, it would seem. So what you see is what you get. Katz is the real deal, albeit a more energetic, engaged deal than one usually gets.

Gideon Obarzanek’s Dance Better At Parties has been hanging around, in one form or another, for almost a decade.

It all began in a dance studio in the ‘burbs. I think I know the kind. When I was at high school, among us was a boy of, as I recall, Filipino origin, who had some prowess as a ballroom dancer. At our school, that wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you shouted about in the quadrangle, but it did engage a few of us who, while keeping up appearances of trademark Aussie masculinity which essentially precluded such proclivities, quietly showed some interest and, as a result, by and by found ourselves taking lessons, after school, at the Snowy River Ballroom (as I recall) in beautiful, downtown West Ryde.

Ah, Sydney buses. It’s not the first time, by any stretch of the imagination, you’ve made me late, or miss out entirely. The 507 should’ve ensured my arrival at the Sydney Opera House in good time to take my seat for the 429th performance of the Australian Ballet’s Don Quixote in the Joan Sutherland Theatre but, being nigh-on half an hour late meant my partner and I just missed the 10-minute window for latecomers.

By special dispensation, we were surreptitiously escorted to a top-tier box; which might sound prestigious, the kind of spot you might expect to see QE2 rather than li’l’ ol’ me, but, frankly, I don’t know why they were even installed, as the view is so restricted. Still, we were lucky to be seated even there, under the circumstances, and sincere thanks are due to the accommodating staff at the Sydney Opera House for saving us from an even lonelier view, in the foyer, afforded via a television screen.

It betrays my less than classical upbringing when I admit that when the tense, rather fraught strains of Sergei Prokofiev’s Cinderella overture launched, I was thinking it sounded like a movie soundtrack; a romantic melodrama perhaps. By the time the first scene scurried into life, where the ugly sisters taunt Cinderella and vie for their step-father’s attention, accompanied by whining strings to capture the sisters’ annoying screeches and complaints, such idle thoughts were gone. I was in.

The Queensland Ballet’s Cinderella, which runs until April 20, is a significant event for two reasons. Firstly, it marks the debut of the man known as Mao’s Last Dancer, Li Cunxin, as the company’s creative director. And it is the first time I’ve ever seen live ballet. OK, the second point is not so significant but for myself and my similarly newbie daughter, it was memorable. This production was joyous, funny, touching and expertly put together. Ballet, I can now say, rocks.

To most Australians, Taft is a hairspray and not a president. All but the broadest strokes of American political history are a blank for most of us, so a show about the strange assortment of people who’ve attempted to assassinate American presidents is a vastly different animal here than it is on its native turf. Assassins, Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s misfit musical opened last night at fortyfivedownstairs, and like the assassins it condemns and celebrates, it hurtles towards its goals with varying degrees of success.

Assassins doesn’t really have a narrative — its events happen over a span of 166 years. We go from John Wilkes Booth, the disgruntled actor who shot Abraham Lincoln in 1865, all the way through to John Hinckley, Jr, who shot Ronald Reagan to impress a teenage Jodie Foster.

Mary Shelley created a monster with Frankenstein. Her novel was subtitled “The Modern Prometheus”, an oft-overlooked fact. If you know your Greek mythology, you’ll know Prometheus was a literary antecedent of Victor Frankenstein, credited with creating a man from clay. Shelley Just took the Promethean myth one grisly step further

Of course, Prometheus, nor Frankenstein, have an exclusive patent on such things. God, as attributed in both the Qur’an and Old Testament, was among the first to indulge in claymation; long before Edison released his ground-breaking ‘trick’ film. The golem is well-known in medieval literature, but harks back to Psalms. There are both Yiddish and Slavic tales which tell of a clay boy. None of them resembled George Clooney, or Brad Pitt. Not even Doug Pitt.

Hannah has disappeared. The first we know of this is through a missing persons detective, who’s looking after Hannah’s cat, Cupid. Collide and Griffin Independent’s world premiere of Girl In Tan Boots is written and produced by Tahli Corin; directed by Susanna Dowling.

Katren Wood’s stark white set design is matched by Teegan Lee’s glaring lights, together conspiring to create a sense of profound emptiness. Hannah, we learn, is (depending who you ask) slightly above ideal weight-for-age (she’s 32), has eczema, has had a fallout with her parents and is on the desperate and dateless side.