Reviews

Home Economics

By Declan Greene. Midsumma Festival. Theatre Works at Explosives Factory. 30 January – 3 February, 2024.

Here is a considerably revised version of Declan Greene’s 2009 play, Home Economics.  Now the play features just three pieces (sketches?).  Filipe Filihia’s set is all gauze and glittering silver curtains – a shimmering, glitzy, show biz look for the very black humour of the show overall.  All three pieces feature food of a sort (candy bars, sausage rolls, tomato sauce, wine, restaurant food that never arrives, and flour - with one character a high school home economics teacher).

The Magic Flute

Composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. Opera Australia. Directed by Kate Gaul. Conducted by Teresa Riveiro Böhm. Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. February 1 to March 16, 2024.

Austria sometimes gets mixed up with Australia, and you may have seen T-shirts to that effect with a map of the European country and a kangaroo crossed out.

This production, composed by Vienna-born Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, blends both countries in a different way. Director Kate Gaul and playwright Michael Gow translated the German language opera into Australian English, and inserted dialogue in place of some of songs.

Alone It Stands

By John Breen. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Directed by Janine Watson. 25 January – 2 March, 2024

This funny comedy tells the story of the legendary day in 1978 when Munster, an Irish amateur football side, beat the mighty New Zealand All Blacks, undisputed kings of Rugby, 12-0 in Limerick. The All Blacks were undefeated on the remainder of that tour, so this momentous day really shines through.

Never fear, you need to know precisely nothing about the arcane rules and regulations of the game to enjoy this tumultuous, breath-taking recounting of Munster’s victory. It is great fun and really gets the audience buzzing.

Oh, Yuk, It’s Me

Written & performed by Jessie Ngaio. Midsumma Festival. The Butterfly Club, Melbourne CBD. 30 January – 3 February 2024

Oh, Yuk, It’s Me is a revival of Jessie Ngaio’s successful 2022 Fringe Festival show for which she achieved Green Room nominations for Best Performer and Best Production in the Independent Theatre category.  More recently, she was a co-devisor and performer in Stickybeak which won Best Comedy in the 2023 Fringe.  In that show she demonstrated her astonishing abilities as a clown and a mime – as well as an ability to transform herself and disappear inside the character of a dog, or a nasty old man, and more.

Overflow

By Travis Alabanza. Presented by Arts Centre Melbourne, Darlinghurst Theatre Company and Midsumma Festival. Directed by Dino Dimitriadis. Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne, 100 St Kilda Rd, Southbank. 31 January to 4 February 2024.

A female toilet in a nightclub is the unassuming setting of this powerful play. Rosie, played by Janet Anderson (she/her), finds herself trapped in the toilet and is surrounded by menacing thumps on the walls and door. The presence of trans women in this social space has become not only contentious but also dangerous. The terrible harm of the threat of physical or psychological harm as a result of an everyday act is forcefully portrayed in this show. Overflow provides a strong and emphatic voice to the trans community.

RENT

Book, Music & Lyrics by Jonathan Larson. Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), Brisbane. 30 January - 11 February 2024, then Australian tour

Following the sold-out, 25th-anniversary production of RENT at the Sydney Opera House in 2021, its award-winning Director, Shaun Rennie, is taking a new, exciting cast on a national tour. The opening night in Brisbane coincided, almost to the day, with RENT’s first off-Broadway performance in 1996. And, what began as an inspired idea to adapt Puccini’s La bohème into a rock opera, is now one of the top-10 longest running shows in Broadway history.

A Body at Work

Written & performed by Frankie van Kan. Direction & dramaturgy Maude Davey. Midsumma Festival. La Mama HQ, Faraday Street, Carlton. 27 January – 4 February 2024

This body at work belongs to Frankie van Kan: among other things, a dancer (table, lap, pole), stripper, sex-worker, and masseuse.  All work that needs and uses her body.  To demystify that body, Frankie begins her show by stripping off a tracksuit, down to nothing but a bra and G-string.  Then, to get any prurience, titillation, ‘mystery’ and even eroticism out of the way, the G-string comes off too and Frankie openly displays her pudenda (‘labia’ as she puts it – or sometimes ‘puss’) in a variety of faux provocative poses f

She Doesn’t Even Go Here

By Hell in Heels.Directed by 6inchminx. Planet Royale Theatre, Northbridge, WA. Jan 25-28, 2024

As the Mean Girls regeneration plays in cinemas, neo-burlesque group Hell in Heels takes enthusiastic audiences back to Northshore High School, as all your favourite characters are brought to life in a burlesque smorgasbord.

The Inheritance (Parts I & II)

By Matthew López. Fortyfivedownstairs, Melbourne. 17 January – 11 February 2024

The Inheritance is many things.  It chronicles the fraught relationships – sexual and otherwise, tender, cruel, obsessive, bewildering, giving and selfish, destructive and self-destructive – of a group of characters across a vast span of time.  It is vast because it drags the key characters’ pasts into the present, and the past and their pasts are vitally important elements of the story.  It is also funny with sharp and snappy one-liners and bitchy gay humour.  It is, if you wished to be reductive, an engrossing, sprawling soap opera about gay

Crush

Written and directed by Benjamin Quirk. Kaos Room, The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, WA. Jan 24-27, 2024

Benjamin Quirk’s solo show Crush is playing for a very short season in The Blue Room’s intimate Kaos Room - the perfect venue for this quirky (sorry), cosy and very funny little show.

Audience members find themselves in Crush Group Therapy, and in this space, Benjamin, a very likeable, personable, and charming performer takes us through the highs and lows of having a crush. Self-deprecating, honest and at times bitter-sweet, this is a 40-minute journey that has its audience rapt - with many in tears from laughing.

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