Reviews

Rumours

By Neil Simon, Tea Tree Players Theatre, SA. 15-25 February 2023

Neil Simon was a prolific and award-winning playwright, his works from the 1960s such as Barefoot in the Park and The Odd Couple hugely popular with audiences and critics. When he wrote Rumors (sic) in 1988, his own marriage was breaking up and he thought he’d write his first farce. The focus of Simon’s work was often the everyday lives and challenges of middle-class people, exploring marital friction for laughs, so this shouldn’t have been a stretch for him.

Not All Dictators

Written by Tiffany Barton, Natali Blok & Kate Smurthwaite. La Mama Courthouse. 15 – 26 February 2023

Here is an anarchic mash-up of Shakespeare (Macbeth but here called MacPutin), Euripides (Medea), the Bible (I think), verbatim accounts of war crimes against women and some original text.  Three raunchy witches or goddesses – Hecate (Victoria Haslam) [the goddess or Shakespeare’s witch?], Jezebel (Prue Daniel) [the evil queen?] and Morgan (Melina Wylie) [Le Fay?], each with a band of black across their eyes, greet each other, josh, tease, roll about, giggling as they take photos of each other’s crotches.  It’s a rather ad hoc ass

Nosferatu

By Keziah Warner. Directed by Bridget Balodis. Malthouse Theatre, 113 Sturt Street Southbank. 10 February – 5 March, 2023.

This is a clever adaptation of the original silent German Expressionist film which was itself an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. This heritage is clearly acknowledged in the play by paying homage to some of the staple elements such as the homoerotic undertones and the use of the motifs of blood and sucking to express both eroticism and violence. 

Songs of the Flesh

Based on texts by Chris Beckey. The Danger Ensemble. Theatre Works, Explosives Factory, Inkerman Street, St Kilda. 8 – 18 February, 2023

At first, we might say that Songs of the Flesh is a familiar, possibly conventional narrative – even if the mode of presentation is startlingly different.  A gay coming of age story that begins as a fairy tale and ends on a city’s mean streets, its defiant happy ending in doubt.  When director Steven Mitchell Wright began work, he even wondered – to writer Chris Beckey – if the play was ‘redundant’. 

The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?

By Edward Albee. State Theatre of South Australia. Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre. 10 – 28 February 2023

The State Theatre of South Australia’s production of Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who is Sylvia, directed by Mitchell Butel, and featuring a stellar cast and crew, is light, bright, funny, and highly entertaining. Observing Aristotle’s dramatic ‘Unities’ of continual time, place, and action, the drama takes place over one day in the living room of wealthy upper-middle class American couple, Martin and Stevie, somewhere in America; probably on the east coast but not definite re location (nor accents).

Prima Facie

By Suzie Miller. Melbourne Theatre Company. Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne. Directed by Lee Lewis. 8 February — 25 March 2023.

This stunning production brings together a variety of finely tuned theatrical elements to achieve maximum impact. The writing in this text is complex and sophisticated but it is combined with a clarity of emotions that make the intricacies of this drama extremely accessible. The vibrancy of the detail is fascinating and easily draws the audience into a world that is normally abstruse and exclusive. 

Grease

By Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey. Old Nick Company – Summer School. David Thomson (Director). Andrew Castles (Musical Director). Caitlyn Carnaby (Choreographer). Christopher Oakley (Set Designer). Andrew Johns (Sound design). Mount Nelson College (Tasmania). 10 – 18 February 2023

“Automatic, systematic and hydromatic”, Grease, the derelict musical vehicle from 1971, is potentially problematic. Inherent to the story are a range of unhelpful stereotypes. Toxic masculinity and misogyny drive a plot in which the main protagonists become something other than who they are to gain the favour of the other.

The Mirror

Gravity and Other Myths. Director Darcy Grant. Drama Theatre Sydney Opera House. 11 Feb – 9 March, 2023

Gravity and Other Myths (GOM) is the Adelaide based acrobatic contemporary circus troupe that is stunning the world with its creative performances. In the words of director, performer, photographer and Helpmann Award winner Darcy Grant, the company entertains “through the language of contemporary circus”. Surely a massive understatement, because Gravity of Myths does much more. Founded in 2007, it has taken its shows around the world, winning fourteen international awards, including three inaugural International Circus Awards in 2021.

Burgerz

By Travis Alabanza. Presented by Bullet Heart Club. Theatre Works, St Leonards Avenue, St Kilda. 8 – 11 February 2023

It all began when a man in London threw a hamburger at playwright Travis Alabanza, accompanied by a transphobic insult.  In a public place.  But transexual phenomenon Kikki Temple makes us believe the play is her story, that it all happened, in Melbourne, to Kikki…

Hairspray

Book by Mark O’Donnell & Thomas Meehan. Music by Marc Shaiman. Lyrics by Scott Wittman & Marc Shaiman. Based upon the New Line Cinema film written & directed by John Waters. Crossroads Live. Sydney Lyric Theatre. Opening Night: February 9, 2023

You can’t stop the smiles as this bright energetic cast take centre stage with all the groovy fun and flair of the swingin’ ‘60s. Hang onto your wigs - this show rocks!  If they made a Hallmark Card for this one, Edna, it would say wowza! fab, far-out groovy show.

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