Reviews

Despite the Australian Ballet’s wildly inventive production of Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, the piece is curiously lacking in dance. A pas-de-deux between the two leads, Adam Bull (Prince) and Marcus Morelli (Little Swallow), and some exquisitely brief sequences with the Little Match Girl (Benedicte Bemet), classical ballet per se is missing. But there’s plenty to please the eye in Graeme Murphy and Kim Carpenter’s playful, sad, and irreverent version that’s alive with child-like magic.

“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.” When Red Peter delivers this Aldous Huxley quote, we’re already uneasy in our seats, disturbed emotionally and physically – and wondering what we’re going to do with this experience.

In Tales of an Urban Indian 35-year-old Canadian indigenous actor, Brendan Chandler ‘becomes’ Simon Douglas, growing up on two different reserves. This piece of non-traditional theatre is compelling, all embracing, challenging and uplifting. The 90-minute, one-man narrative, like his earlier performance piece, How Did You Find Me Here? is the journey of a young man coming to understand his Indian heritage and its impact on his life.

Amore e Morte is a fascinating and compelling ‘song cycle’ written and performed by local artists Riccardo Barone (originally from Italy) and Nikki Elli Souvertjis. As its title suggest this is a tale about ‘Love and Death’ and told through music and songs. Furthermore, the tale is told from a female perspective – the wife of an Italian man. He has witnessed a murder and is pressured by an unknown force (the Mafia? Government? Police?) to remain silent.