Reviews

Salty Brine is a cyclone of talent who whirls together music, memoir and literary history in a way which almost defies description.  It’s a heady mix of out their camp cabaret, humour and serious anecdote.

Resplendent in a fur lined cape, Brine sheds one glittering layer after another – prowling into the audience to eyeball individuals.

For ninety minute he is at full throttle only stopping for a brief sip from a wine glass.

Saturday Night Fever, the West End and Broadway musical based on the groundbreaking 1977 film starring John Travolta, offers a powerful and poignant journey into the heart of the 1970s disco scene.

South Korean choreographer and director Eun-Me Ahn begins this stunning satirical circus with animations of what the western eye sees as traditional Asian cultures – the precise and slow gestures, the still subservience, the enigma of the East.

Edward Said, influential author of Orientalism (1978), would know the cliches, and probably smile at how Ahn and her seven dancers deconstruct these traditions and replace them with new cliches, high camp and post-modern. 

Last May graduating students of Sydney’s Actors Centre presented this 1985 Sam Shepard play under the direction of their drama teacher John Walraven. Now they are reviving their production in the space available before the New Theatre’s 2026 season begins next month. Don’t come expecting the New’s all-round standards of role-playing: these are former students at the start of their careers. Come instead for a touch of Shepard quality, for the bruised power of neglected American families living in a world of shared torment.