Reviews

A Year of Dating

By Lucy Holz. Midsumma Festival. The MC Showroom, Prahran. 31 January – 11 February 2023

The publicity shot for A Year of Dating in the Midsumma Program shows delicate female fingers feeling (probing?) the petals of a rose.  The iconography is clear enough.  The show, however, is anything but delicate.  It tells of twelve dates, ranging from the merely dull to the outrageously gross.

Trophy Boys

By Emmanuelle Mattana. The Maybe Pile. Directed by Marni Mount. Midsumma Festival. fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. 2-12 February 2023.

This sharp-witted play puts a mirror up to the arrogance that characterises the entitled and highly spoilt young men being churned out of private schools across western culture. The reflection that is cast is rather ugly, but it is also extremely humorous. The play is set during the preparation for an important debate whose outcome could significantly impact the future ambitions of the four members of the team.

A Broadcast Coup

By Melanie Tait. Sydney Festival 2023, at The Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Directed by Janine Watson. 26 January – 4 March 2023

This play has been a long time coming. Caught up in the COVID mess, it now emerges over two years later, running behind playwright Melanie Tait’s hugely successful major hit The Appleton Ladies Potato Race, first as an Ensemble play, soon to be released as a movie. No doubt the Race is more whimsical than the current play, but it certainly hit home harder.

Wittenoom

By Mary Anne Butler. Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre. An INK World Premiere. Red Stitch, East St Kilda. 26 January – 19 February 2023

With Wittenoom, Mary Anne Butler has achieved something remarkable.  Her play is ‘poetic drama’, a form that is extremely difficult to make work.  In some hands it can be wearying, even pretentious - unless one is a poet and a dramatist:  Butler is both.  This is an intense, passionate play, sharp and evocative in its imagery, visceral in its emotions.

Mono

Bunbury Productions. Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre. 1–5th February 2023

First performed in early 2022, Mono is a three-person satirical romp. It is 90 minutes of wit, fun and extremely clever writing, presented as 10 Scenes and is evocative of the comedy style of the 1970s to the 1990s where revues full of clever, pithy dialogue were de rigueur. The emphasis is not on elaborate props (they are almost non-existent), glamorous sets (there is not one) and flashy lighting (well they did change the light colour several times).

Kovid Rat Kabarett Goes Spiral

By Ella Filar & Cerise De Gelder. La Mama Courthouse, 349 Drummond Street, Carlton. 1-12 February 2023.

This show is very strong conceptually; the idea that the pandemic has transformed society into a collective medical and social experiment that has reduced all members into laboratory rats is a powerful underlying idea. The rat imagery is gradually but emphatically introduced into the show. As the performers recount their experiences of lockdown (and their gradual descent into neurosis or psychosis) the rat imagery becomes louder and stronger.

A Southern Fairytale

By Ty Autry. Midsumma Festival. The Butterfly Club, Melbourne. Jan 30 – Feb 4, 2023

A Southern Fairytale is a beautifully conceived show written and starring Ty Autry in a one-hour revelatory monologue chronicled in six chapters, set-in modern-day Georgia, USA. Ty Autry plays Alex Belmont, who grew up in the Deep South, a challenging time for him, living in a small town with a church on every corner and Confederacy flags flying high, were denial and anti-gay sentiments were rife.

The Angel with Blue Eyes

By Freddie Fitzpatrick-Lubowitz. Midsumma Festival. La Mama HQ. 27 January – 4 February 2023

Kit (Bridget Morrison) has come out, to the horror and disgust of her fundamentalist Christian family.  Her father’s response was to beat her up and throw her out of the family home.  Her brother Peter (Ryan Tracey) not only did not defend her but wrote an open letter of disgust, denigrating her.  Her other brother, loving Dan (Charlie Boscolo), remains loyal to her, separating him from his brother.  And so, Kit’s family – albeit repressive and bigoted - has been rent asunder by Kit’s confession of her sexuality.  Worse, Kit now lives with Bi

Chef

By Sabrina Mahfouz. Virginia Plain with KXT bAKEHOUSE. Director Victor Kalka. KXT Kings Cross Hotel. 25 Jan- 4 Feb, 2023

In a very tight, very concentrated production, Alice Birbara reprises her 2022 performance of this searing, yet lyrical play by British-Egyptian poet and playwright Sabrina Mahfouz. The character Birbara plays is a convicted criminal in a women’s prison. Once a haute-cuisine chef, she has earned the privilege of running the prison kitchen. And that’s where we meet her – where she tells her story interspersed with graphic descriptions of the dishes she used to create.

Bat Out of Hell the Musical

Music, Book and Lyrics by Jim Steinman. Based on the Bat Out of Hell album by Meat Loaf. TEG Dainty. Qudos Bank Arena Sydney. January 27, 2023

True believers in the music of Meat Loaf got their money’s worth, enjoying the lightning bolts of beautiful singing and a terrific band.

However general theatre goers were left scratching their heads at some aspects of the production, which one audience member described to me as ‘high school standard.’

The leads curiously had hand-held microphones, and awkwardly mixed performing to a roving camera, and other times to each other. The camera angles during the dialogue were at times clunky and poorly lit.

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