Reviews

A Festival of Russian Ballet

The Imperial Russian Ballet. Concert Hall, QPAC. 19-20 October 2017

Australian audiences have had a love affair with Russian dance companies ever since Michael Edgley and Andrew Guild began touring them to Australia in the 1960’s. It’s this love of Russian dance that permeates the whole performance of the Festival of Imperial Russian Ballet, a pop-pourri of popular pieces from the classical repertoire.

Germinal

Conception and Direction by Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort. Melbourne Festival. Malthouse Theatre. 19 – 22 October, 2017

Germinal is marvelous festival fare – an exceptional experience.  It is just the sort of show that stretches expectations and delivers the completely unpredicted in a totally unique way.  One gasps and laughs with surprise whilst being charmed by the whimsical nonsensicality of the experience.  And yet all the time the reasoning of the whole seems to be based on the perfectly rational.

We Love Arabs

Written & performed by Hillel Kogan with Adi Boutrous. Batsheva Dance Company of Israel. Melbourne Festival. The Coopers Malthouse Beckett Theatre. 18 – 22 October 2017

We Love Arabs is a dance-comedy-drama show; it is simple in concept but rich in metaphor, allegory and irony.  It is beautifully, straight-facedly executed satire and – beneath its wit and its piss-take on the pretensions of ‘contemporary dance, a bitingly serious piece.  It is – ostensibly and actually - about those awkward neighbours, the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The Melbourne Monologues

Melbourne Writers’ Theatre. La Mama Courthouse, 17 – 22 October, 2017

Melbourne Writers’ Theatre continues to impress with another engaging series of monologues, The Melbourne Monologues. Like The St Kilda Stories it is also a series of six short stories that are directed with care and sensitivity by Elizabeth Walley.

The Kitchen Sink

By Tom Wells. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Director: Shane Bosher. 14 October – 18 November 2017

The most important things to get right are the place and the time. The Kitchen Sink is set in the fading seaside village of Withernsea, East Yorkshire, a few years ago as Martin’s milk delivery float, a risky rival to Tesco, is rapidly running out of business. Director Shane Bosher, with no assistance from the Ensemble’s program, completely nails it.

Chicago

Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. Willoughby Theatre Company. Director: Andrew Castle. Musical Director: Alex Ash. Choreographer: Janina Hamerlok. The Concourse, Chatswood. Oct 13 – 22, 2017.

Long before TV hits Wentworth and Orange is the New Black, there was Chicago, the John Kander, Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse Broadway Musical collaboration about women in prison for killing their lovers and husbands, their slimy lawyer and corrupt prison warder. Based on a 1926 play, it’s inspired by real criminals of the time, telling its satirical tale of celebrity criminals and the corruption of the legal system in the vaudeville style, used as a sort of Brechtian device

SHOUT! The Legend of The Wild One

By John-Michael Howson, David Mitchell and Melvyn Morrow. MLOC. Shirley Burke Theatre, Parkdale. 13 October to 21 October 2017

MLOC’s production of Shout! is a classic example of Community Theatre being alive and well in the suburbs of Melbourne.

Director Rhylee Nowell has pulled together a group of musical theatre devotees and produced a show that has the audience singing along. 

Rhinoceros

By Eugene Ionesco. heartBeast Theatre, Brisbane. Directed by Steve Pearton. October 13 – 28, 2017

Rhinoceros, written in 1959 by Romanian / Frenchman Eugene Ionesco, illustrates how radical groups such as the Nazis, fascists or communists can come into being and sweep the people up into their beliefs. As a model, he has used the rhinoceros that at first seems strange and unattractive but lures most into the group. This is Theatre of the Absurd and heartBeast has staged it in a theatre that matched the play. In the Reservoir Theatre, at the bottom of four flights of stairs, the audience sat on three sides of a small square stage between four pillars.

One the Bear

Written and composed by Candy B and Busty Beatz. A La Boite, Campbelltown Arts Centre & Black Honey Company production. La Boite Roundhouse Theatre, 10 – 21 October, 2017

You could almost hear the fizz as the effervescent opening night crowd eagerly anticipated the start of One the Bear. Perhaps it was that the reputation of NIDA graduate and award winning performer Candy Bowers that had everyone so excited. Maybe the concept of Black Honey Company which she formed with her sister and long-time musical collaborator Kim Busty Beats Bowers had everyone enthused.

I Am My Own Wife

By Doug Wright. Black Swan State Theatre Company. Directed by Joe Hooligan Lui, Studio Underground, State Theatre Centre of WA. Oct 12-29, 2017

I Am My Own Wifeis a fascinating one-person play by Doug Wright about the life of Charlotte Von Mahlsdorf, an off-beat and passionate museum curator and antiquarian who lived through the Nazi era and Communist East Germany, and was an openly transgender woman.

Director Joe Hooligan Lui, perhaps better known as a lighting and sound designer, brings sensitive but strong direction to this excellent story, and is also responsible for the clever and moving sound-scape.

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