Reviews

The Adelaide University Theatre Guild and director Thomas Filsell are to be congratulated for mounting The Wonderful World of Dissocia, a play highlighting mental illness, what it feels like to be mentally ill, and what it feels like when someone you love is mentally ill.

Anthony Neilson’s 2004 drama about dissociative identity disorder was partially created while Neilson was working with a theatre group. It toys with the idea that mental illness is a world for the person who has it. It was then rewritten by a theatre company collaborating with Neilson.

After a sold-out world premiere last year, Driftwood The Musical will grace the boards again not only in Melbourne and Sydney but potentially in New York and beyond.  Very exciting prospects indeed for an original home grown musical!  Driftwood follows the compelling lives of six relatives enduring the struggles of WWII in Europe and its after-effects upon their relationships. It’s a tale of displaced Polish Jewish families struggling to stay together despite the harsh odds continually stacked against them.  

It is not often that rehearsed readings are reviewed! But this is a little more than a ‘reading’ …

The Disappearance is a ‘double adaptation’! It is based on the book The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear by Kin Platt in 1968 and Baxter, the 1973 screenplay of the book written by Reginald Rose. Director Les Solomon first directed the play in 1976 at the Wayside Chapel and for a youth theatre production in 1991.

The Bleeding Tree made its WA debut at The Blue Room in November 2021, with the same director and design team.  Due to its high impact, ability to touch an audience and its success, it has been picked up by Black Swan State Theatre Company and is now playing to larger audiences. Set in an isolated Australian town, this is an hour-long tale about women who have greeted the abusive man of the house with a deadly rifle shot, and are now dealing with the result of that action.