Reviews

The Women’s Circus presents their triennial large-scale production as part of this year’s second Due West Festival in Footscray. It is a nostalgic journey conducted in an original Drill Hall, once used as a military training venue for local young male volunteers before they headed off to battle in World War One.

The Drill Hall is also the residence of Women’s Circus, a committed feminist organization since 1991, who have consistently provided women the opportunity to develop self-confidence and skills using creative circus training methods.

Kiss of the Spider Woman is a tragedy, a tale of courage, love and redemption.  It is set in a prison in an unnamed South American dictatorship – a place of imprisonment without trial, murder and torture for subversives and ‘perverts’.  John Kander and Fred Ebb were drawn to stories with an underbelly of wry cynicism and harsh reality – Cabaret, Chicago – but this is darker than most. Any music theatre devotee will want to see this production of a work by these two masters. 

Most of us have heard of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table based at Camelot. Arthur supposedly existed around the fifth century but most historians now believe it all to be a myth. The Monty Python film took this to preposterous lengths and this musical has gone even further. Thus, we have King Arthur and his knights of the round table – when he can convince some to join him – searching for the holy grail. Add singing and dance to the farcical situations, and the diverse people Arthur meets, and the end product is Spamalot. Wow!

Set in a resort–style fishing lodge in rural Georgia, this comedy uses humour to make the message about racial discrimination – or any form of discrimination – even more potent. Charlie is brought to stay for a few days to allow him to mentally recover and his friend tells the hostess that Charlie cannot speak or understand English. You can only imagine what people say in front of him as they believe he can’t understand them. We follow an interesting tale of personal relationships, and even the coming of the Ku Klux Klan, in an extremely comic way.