Reviews

Thank goodness for community theatre and all that it offers: membership, stage and backstage experience, camaraderie, upskilling, belonging.  There is great value in the relationships that exist between community, theatre, and identity, and our world can always do with more of it.  Plus the Tea Tree Players have been in the game since 1976 as well as in possession of a delightful and welcoming theatre space; they are truly a gem of an institution.

Andy Balloch succeeds at something at which others mostly fail.  First, he is charming, endearing and funny.  That certainly makes a difference.  But then, in his act, he combines so many unlikely elements that in other hands – or minds – would be a random, incoherent mess.  He makes it work.

This an extremely well written play that demonstrates a fine balance in the way that it marries absurdism with realism. The text portrays what looks like an ordinary run of the mill job interview. However, as the interview progresses it becomes increasingly unorthodox and at times even nightmarish. Although there are many surreal qualities in the text, the staging provides are very naturalistic setting. This completely belies the offbeat conversation that unfolds.

Nearly 150 years after Lucy Maude Montgomery’s birth, her feisty Anne (‘with an e’) Shirley is as beloved as ever – as numerous theatrical, film and television adaptations of the Anne of Green Gables books attest – and Donald Harron and Norman Campbell’s musical has run uninterrupted (but for Covid) in Canada since its premiere in 1965 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (LM’s and Anne’s home). Anne Blythe Cooper’s production of this musical for Hobart Rep captures the nostalgic charm of Anne Shirley’s world.