Reviews

The sound of castanets, flamenco dancing, and bull fights were frequently conjured up in this classical chamber concert headed by guitar soloist Slava Grigoyan. Cancelled in 2020 because of Covid restrictions, this Southern Cross Soloists concert has been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.

Jim (Daniel Tobias) and Barb (Clare Bartholomew) are both familiar yet surprising characters. These personas are an innovative invention of the director and the performers and they draw on a variety of comedic strategies to bring them to life. Jim and Barb undoubtedly belong to the Commedia dell’Arte tradition where the characters are mostly driven by their bodily needs and their primary emotional desires. Food and love are often the motivations for their actions providing enormous comic circumstances usually played out physically. 

The audience was abuzz on the afternoon I attended. A steamy venue could not dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd as we all anticipated being in the presence of greatness. Carlotta - only first name required - is a living legend. Having packed several lifetimes into her 78 years, she was not short of material as she sashayed onto the stage.

The talented Michael Griffiths opened the show with the standard ‘As if we Never Said Goodbye’ - it was packed with perfect sentiment, given Carlotta has graced our stages and screens for the past 62 years.

This interactive offering from the mind of Joshua Kernich is a tremendous ten minutes of surprising, thought-provoking fun. You gather with a handful of others around a large TV screen and a pixelated character walks through a familiar landscape from a platform video game of the 1990s.