Reviews

The Importance of Being Earnest

By Oscar Wilde. WAAPA 3rd Year Acting Students. Directed by Dan Bird. The Roundhouse Theatre, WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, WA. May 4-10, 2018.

As you entered the Roundhouse Theatre for The Importance of Being Earnest, you encountered signs warning of adult content. While Oscar Wilde’s comedy of manners is undeniably clever, it would not usually be considered that wild or ill-mannered. It is our first indication that this production is a little different.

The Last of the Red Hot Lovers

By Neil Simon. Halpin Productions. Director: Clem Halpin. Ocean Shores Community Centre, Northern NSW. 11th – 20th May, 2018.

Former Gold Coast director Clem Halpin has opened his latest production in the seaside town of Ocean Shores, a couple of klms north of Brunswick Heads, and for this venture he has chosen the Neil Simon hit comedy The Last of the Red Hot Lovers.

This four hander has the luckless Barney Cashman desperately trying to score with three women from a variety of backgrounds with hysterical results.

Baby Cake

By Kerensa Diball & Yuhui Ng-Rodriguez. Next Wave and Darebin Arts Speakeasy. Northcote Town Hall. May 9 – 13, 2018.

Baby Cake is an exceptionally honest and raw new duo performance by Kerensa Diball and Yuhui Ng- Rodrigeuz. They are a collaborative team in the practice of site, movement and domestic space. This is a post-modern piece addressing contemporary feminist artists.

They weave themselves in out around the space with a comforting warmth yet a detached calmness. An aired pre-recorded message is posed as a dilemma for both, unable to commit time to their art because of their own personal commitments.

Bliss

By Peter Carey. Adapted for the Stage by Tom Wright. Malthouse Theatre and Belvoir Production. Direction – Matthew Lutton. Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse. 4 May – 2 June 2018

Bliss is a fascinating ‘look back’ at the heady days of abundance and hedonism in Sydney of the 1980’s through the sharp incisive writing of Peter Carey - filtered by way of the perceptions and dramaturgical skills of Tom Wright.   It is presented by an eclectic ensemble of versatile actors on a surprising set by Marg Horwell, with exceptional lighting (Paul Jackson) and sound (Stefan Gregory) and highly polished by direction by Matthew Lutton.  It is a lengthy, ambitious, keenly conceptualized and executed, hypnotic work that spans three hours

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Script: Rachel Sheinkin. Music and Lyrics: William Finn. Theatre and Company. Riverside Theatre Parramatta. May 10 – 13, 2018

The inaugural musical produced by new theatre group Theatre and Company of the hilarious show The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was a well-received hit on opening night.

Performed in the intimate Lennox Theatre at Riverside, it made you feel like you were in the audience of a live Spelling Bee.

Good Cook. Friendly. Clean.

By Brooke Robinson. Griffin Theatre Company. SBW Stables Theatre. May 4 – June 16, 2018

Brooke Robinson shows an horrific slide to homelessness for a Sydney working woman in her 50s.

Sandra’s voyage begins applying to shared households, visiting and seeking acceptance, desperate in interviews to match the whims of mostly crazed millennials.

Fayssal Bazzi and Kelly Paterniti play a range of revengeful brats, party-crazed dits, spoilt sloths or distracted young mums who interrogate and tease Sandra as a possible new housemate, before always showing her the door.

Poison

By Lot Vekemans (translated by Rina Verago). Sue Benner Theatre, Metro Arts, Brisbane. 9 to 19 May 2018

‘Grief’ is a very literary subject – something we will gladly allow to envelop us in a one-on-one with a book or in a dark cinema. It is not a topic we eagerly seek out in live entertainment. And so, it must be a challenge, when presenting a one-act two-hander about deep-seated grief – caused in this case by the loss of a child – to get the balance right and avoid dishing up a slice of soap.

The Sugar House

By Alana Valentine. Belvoir, Upstairs Theatre. May 5 – June 3, 2018.

Alana Valentine is best known as a verbatim playwright giving voice to diverse communities and the challenges and sometimes horrors they’ve endured. 

The Sugar House similarly has a sharp sense of place; set in Sydney’s once working class suburb of Pyrmont, around the then iconic CSR factory, if now dominated by a casino and washed clean by new gentrification.

Shirley Valentine

By Willy Russell. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Director: Mark Kilmurry. 3 May – 9 June 2018

‘Marriage is like the Middle East – there’s no solution!’ So says 42-year-old Shirley Bradshaw in her typical, straightforward Liverpool manner. Once she used to be Shirley Valentine, before marriage to Joe and before her two children, Brian and Millandra. Now she talks to the walls in her Liverpool semi-detached home, one among whole rows in the streets outside.

Twelfth Night

By William Shakespeare. Queensland Theatre. Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC). 28 April - 19 May 2018

Twelfth Night is the classic romantic comedy involving mistaken identity, written by Shakespeare as post-Christmas entertainment around the turn of the 17th century. Based on a couple of existing sources, and written after the intensity of Hamlet, this light entertainment with its evergreen themes of love and topsy-turvy mayhem must have been a positive relief for the writer and a delight for audiences.

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