Reviews

Slip into your seats in Sydney Opera House’s Dame Joan Sutherland Theatre, as producers John Frost and Opera Australia throw the switch on their theatrical time capsule, transporting us to 1956, the height of Broadway’s Golden Age of Musical Theatre.

My Fair Lady’s overture, encapsulating Frederick Loewe’s timeless score, is delivered in all its glory by a lavish 32 piece orchestra, the likes of which you haven’t heard from a musical theatre pit in years, lifting spirits from its opening strains.

The literary output of the three Brontë sisters paints a varied picture of the inescapable confines of genteel rural poverty.  The authors well knew such poverty and its limitations on opportunity, and well knew too that marriage was the key to escaping it permanently, and that imagination was the key to doing so daily.  Mel Dodge’s script, featuring Charlotte Brontë’s words from letters and conversation, has Charlotte speak of their lives in detail, and particularly of their writing habits and of Charlotte’s abiding but doomed love.

A jewel of a two-hander, Blackbird by Scotland’s David Harrower made its mark around the world after its debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005.  It’s a revelatory showdown between Una and Ray.  She has tracked him down fifteen years after their brief relationship, back when he was 40 and she just 12 years old. 

Pursued by Bear continue their quest to outdo themselves with every new production, so it’s always a delight to see their shows, especially when one is an Australian Premiere.

First Date is a delightful (off) Broadway show with a witty and smart book by Austin Windberg, and songs by Alan Zachary and Michael Weiner, which won’t stretch you, but which add to the charm of the evening. An extra benefit is the transposing of the show from America to Fitzroy, so we know the urbanised Aussie accents are totally natural.