Reviews

This is not your normal serious play with realistic characters in a realistic setting but more where the audience has to use its imagination with regard to both the characters and the set – what there was of it. As the director stated, he used many of the traditions of vaudeville and satire. For the most part, this has worked really well.

Classy dinner theatre in a classy venue. The Bailey Dolls and Friends present: The Vintage Variety Hour is a wonderful night of theatre, a delight to the ears and a lot of fun to boot!

The Bailey Dolls are Merrilyn Greer, Catherine Hearne, Leah Gauthier and Gillian Quinn, together with two very dapper friends, Buddy Dawson and Sebastian Cooper.  This wonderfully talented group are very ably accompanied by The Duckies – Emma Knights on piano, Sean Renaud on bass, Barnabas Smith on drums, and Chris Weber on trumpet.

Stories in the Dark is performed in complete darkness by a group of 3 actors, a cello and the audience’s own imagination. Darkness is something we don’t think about often, usually only when we are in it, and then it’s normally bed time, but director Tim Overton and the creative team have put together a new and interesting way to experience theatre.

It’s always a pleasure to witness enterprising young artists forming companies with the aim to provide opportunities for performers to practice their craft in front of audiences (and critics). After Dinner is perhaps an unexpected choice for an Andrew Bovell staging, but StarheART Theatre deserve both encouragement and applause for taking this comedy-of-nightlife-manners, dating from the late 1980s, and breathing a most enjoyable life into it.