Reviews

While some of us watched and listened online, an excited – albeit socially distanced – audience were welcomed back to Parramatta Riverside Theatre for An Enchanted Evening of music. Enchanting it was, bringing some of the most famous arias and love songs from opera and musical theatre on to a stage that has been bereft of a live audience for a long six months.

The Shows Must Go On continues its free streaming this weekend with Alfie Boe’s Bring Him Home Tour from the Royal Festival Hall in 2012. The British tenor, who first came to notice in the O2 Arena Concert Production of Les Misérables (2002), is in thrilling voice, with impeccable phrasing, as he sings a good selection of modern musical theatre favourites.

Brutally horrific, Philip Ridley’s Vincent River has been given a taut and harrowing production by Curators Theatre, with solid direction by Michael Beh. It’s the Brisbane premiere of this bleak play, which has had innumerable productions since its world premiere at the Hampstead Theatre, London, 2000. It’s not time specific, but judging by the music that permeates the production, it feels like we’re back in the eighties.

Grease – the musical began life in a Chicago night-club in 1971. The title comes from an American sub-culture group known as ‘the greasers’. Grease moved to Broadway in 1972 and the international smash hit movie version was released in 1978. Subsequently, it was revived in 1994 and 2007, combining the original and movie versions. Grease is now a ‘classic’ pop musical, and as evident in this delightful Adelaide Youth Theatre production, is as wonderful and as subversive as it ever was.