Reviews

Prehistoric is a landmark show; a fierce punk-driven piece of theatre, set in Brisbane and looking back in time during Premier Joh Bjelke Petersen’s reign of brutal law enforcement, across the state of Queensland.

An Elbow Room production, written and directed by Marcel Dorney, Prehistoric is back for another season before heading off to Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. It was a Green Room Award winner for writing and new production in 2015, after its debut in Brisbane the previous year.

We all love characters to hate and there’s no shortage of them in James Goldman’s 1966 dysfunctional-family historical drama The Lion in Winter. Set in France at Christmas 1183, it sets up a battle for the English throne between the ruling monarch Henry ll, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, and his three sons, Richard, Geoffrey, and John. When the play was written in 1966 it was criticized for its anachronistic dialogue, but in the era of Games of the Thrones it almost seems contemporary.

Here is a production that starts with terrific aesthetic beauty and with a lovely energy from its performers.  Superbly realized and splendidly cast  - Melancholia is a feast for the senses.

The virtue of this pared back, ‘poor theatre’ production of Julius Caesar is its simplicity – and therefore its clarity.  The cast is young – or seems young – and they wear what look like op-shop clothes – that is, an everyday hotchpotch of contemporary no style.