Reviews

Galah might look like chaos, but every moment, every move is planned, thought out and deliberate – dance moves, clown routines, costumes and the intricate lighting plot.  This includes the show grinding to a halt after one o-so-sad song (‘Where is my Heart?  Where is my Life?’) and some anarchic and despairing destruction by Elizabeth Dawson-Smith – or Miss Friby, if you prefer – and Louise Purcell, who has burst onto the stage as if shot from a cannon. 

There have been many important musical events in my life, none more so than seeing Robyn Archer playing Annie 1 in Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht to open the Space theatre at the Adelaide Festival Centre in 1974. I later discovered that this was her first role, so I feel honoured to have seen her in this iconic piece of German theatre.

I have been fascinated with this Australian chanteuse ever since. She is equally at home with German cabaret as she is with country music which is her roots.

Where Water Once Was is a domestic drama with edge. Nicely directed and well-acted, it tells of a family struggling to deal with change as a mother succumbs to dementia and her adult children struggle to deal with a crumbling family home which holds dark secrets.

1933.  Professor John Halder (David Tenant), a specialist in Goethe at the University of Frankfurt, is a ‘good’ man – liberal, rational, moral – or so he thinks.  He is initially dismayed by Hitler but figures the Nazis won’t last and all this anti-Jewish thing likewise – it’s just ridiculous.  These are ‘rational’ but self-serving opinions.