Reviews

The Ladies Foursome

By Norm Foster. Toowoomba Repertory Theatre. 17 February - 3 March 2018.

Toowoomba Repertory Theatre teed off their 2018 season with The Ladies Foursome, a comedy staged around a friendly game of golf. Three long-term friends (Tate, Margot and Connie), one player short due to the untimely death of their usual fourth (Cathy) are joined by a newcomer (Dory). Each hole on the course is a chance for the group to grapple with the game and parallel revelations about their friendships – especially why Cathy never mentioned Dory over many years of weekly golf meet-ups.

Parting the Red Curtains: A show that takes it up the arts!

Written by Queenie van de Zandt and Peter J. Casey. Directed by Queenie van de Zandt. The Q (Queanbeyan). 28 February – 1 March 2018, and touring

The risqué nature of the show that Queenie van de Zandt’s character the musical therapist Jan van de Stool launches upon her audience may be evident in the production’s sub-title.  Though there’s nothing crude in the humour that van de Stool launches upon her audience, it’s definitely risqué.

 

Hot Sauce Burlesque

Adelaide Fringe Festival 2018. The Rhino Room. Feb 18 - Mar 2, 2018

According to the Oxford dictionary, burlesque is “A variety show, typically including striptease.” However, as I discovered watching Hot Sauce Burlesque, it is so much more!

Yes, the girls do take their clothes off and show us what they can do with their tassels, but it is obvious that there is a real sisterhood between them. When not performing they are sitting at the side of the audience in robes encouraging each other.

Jimeoin: Ridiculous

Adelaide Fringe. Matthew Flinders Theatre, Flinders University. 3rd March 2018

Jimeoin will be well known to most Fringe-goers as that cheeky Irish comedian who’s graced our stand-up comedy stages for over a quarter of a century. Many of us have laughed all the way to middle age with him, but for the younger audience members he’s equally as well-known, but as that funny Irish guy seen on The Project and television comedy galas.

Venus in Fur

By David Ives. Melville Theatre, WA. Directed by Trevor Dhu. Feb 16 - Mar 3, 2018

Melville Theatre’s Venus in Fur, written by David Ives, is a dynamic and expertly presented two-hander that had the audience on the edge of their seats.

Set in New York, Thomas Novachek is directing his own adaptation of Venus in Fur, and lamenting the suitability of the actresses who have auditioned for lead character Wanda von Dunayev, when actress Vanda Jordan crashes into the room and demands an audition. Despite seeming obviously unsuitable, her reading is amazing and the lines between the novel, the play and life become increasingly blurred.

Thyestes

Written by Thomas Henning, Chis Ryan, Simon Stone, Mark Winter after Seneca. Adelaide Festival / The Hayloft Project / Belvoir. Directed by Simon Stone. Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre. March 2 - 7, 2018.

How do we explain, understand and live with the acts of humans’ inhumanity to others, and our unceasing ability to commit atrocities, create fear, inflict pain, denigrate and dehumanise others?

We create myths, we attribute labels to the perpetrators, and we see and think of these acts and their agents as aberrations. We ask ourselves and others, “How could they do this?”

Thyestes shares ‘the moments between atrocities” and shows us that it isn’t a matter of them, but us. It is a part of how we as humans are.

Memorial

Adelaide Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 1st - 6th March, 2018

Homer’s epic 2,800 year old poem Iliad describes a few weeks in the final year of the siege against the city of Troy, in particular the quarrel between King Agamemnon and Achilles.  In Memorial: An excavation of the Iliad, published in 2011, author Alice Oswald set out to translate the Iliad’s atmosphere, it’s ‘enargeia’ rather than its story. In doing so she has stripped the Iliad of its narrative and drawn forth the biographies and brutal killings of the 215 soldiers Homer named.

The Men in Black

Performed by Chris Callaghan as Johnny Cash and Dean Bourne as Roy Orbison - Empire Theatre, Toowoomba (2 March 2018) -touring VIC, NSW, and ACT until end of May 2018.

Why do we love tribute acts? Braving the afternoon thunderstorm to see The Men in Black tribute to Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, a capacity crowd at Toowoomba’s Empire Theatre provided the answer: performers as unique as Cash and Orbison – early originators of popular music as we know it today – deserve to be heard by their fans and also discovered by new audiences. And, for the musicians, it must also be difficult to resist the back catalogue of songs that today’s performers can only dream of.

Worktable

Festival of Live Art. Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall. March 14 – 25, 2018

Worktable is a new participatory live art installation by Kate McIntosh and is part of  the Live Art Festival from 14-25 March at the Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall.

As part of the test audience for the new show I feel at ease to say it was quite an inner exploratory adventure. The workstation ambience had a pensive atmosphere. Worktable is an active, creative, meditative and or destructive participatory exploration of live installation.

True Minds

By Joanna Murray Smith. Centenary Theatre Group. Director: Gary O'Neil. Chelmer Community Centre, Chelmer, Qld. March 3 - 24, 2018

Joanna Murray Smith is one of Australia’s most prolific and popular playwrights. She knows her middle-class audience and writes accordingly. The premise of True Minds is that a man never marries a woman his mother doesn’t approve of, a concept espoused in a best-selling book by the protagonist Daisy Grayson (Beck Haining).

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