Reviews

Birdcage Thursdays

By Sandra Fiona Long. Directed by Caitlin Dullard, fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. 2 – 12 November 2017.

This play attempts to address a confronting social issue with freshness and humour. The concept is endearing with a very noble agenda. Helene (Genevieve Picot) is an elderly woman whose tendency for hoarding is placing her independent living at risk. Sophia Constantine plays both her pet cockatoo and her frustrated daughter, who is struggling to convince her mother that her hoarding is becoming unstainable. The author, Sandra Fiona Long, also acts as a playful narrator who highlights the often bizarre nature of the scenarios that are depicted.

There Goes the Bride

Play by Ray Cooney & John Chapman. Centenary Theatre. Director: Janine Francis. Chelmer Community Centre, Brisbane. November 4-25, 2017.

The premise of Ray Cooney and John Chapman’s farce There Goes the Bride is a switch on the time-travel aspect of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court coupled with Mary Chase’s hallucinatory Harvey, whereby an ad-executive gets a bonk on the head and wakes up with a 1920’s flapper by his side which only he can see.

The Conspirators

By Vaclav Hável. South Australian Premiere. Red Phoenix Theatre. Holden Street Theatres. 2-11 November, 2017.

Synonyms for conspirators include plotters, connivers, collaborators and accomplices, and all of these are true descriptions for the group who form the centre of The Conspirators, Red Phoenix Theatre’s current production.

Cinderella

Music: Richard Rodgers. Book & Lyrics: Oscar Hammerstein II. Queensland Musical Theatre. Director: Deian Ping. Musical Director: Gerry Crooks. Choreography: Julianne Burke. Schonell Theatre, St Lucia 1-5 Nov 2017

Whoever plays Cinderella needs to look and act like a princess and fortunately Queensland Musical Theatre have found the perfect girl for the role. Sarah Copley is princess material personified; singing in a mature soprano, looking magical in a white ball-gown, and tripping daintily up the steps of the palace, she is the best thing about this very old-fashioned production.

Merciless Gods

Short stories by Christos Tsiolkas, adapted to the stage by Dan Giovannoni. Little Ones Theatre / Griffin Independent. SBW Stables Theatre. November 1 – 25, 2017.

Melbourne queer company Little Ones Theatre reveals a dark underbelly of life and love in the intimate space of Sydney’s Griffin.  

This is an adaptation of eight stories from a collection by Christos Tsiolkas published in 2014, a highly visceral and wrenching voyage though prisons, deathbeds, saunas and alleyways to cheap rent boys, drugs and porn.

Writer Dan Giovannoni doesn’t always translate the exposition of literature into living theatrical experience but, even then, Tsiolkas’ original words still shock and grabs us by the throats.

Hotelling

A Bleached Arts Production. Peppers Soul, Surfers Paradise. 1st-5th November, 2017. 2 shows nightly

There is an active movement in South East Queensland to produce entertainment more up-market and away from the obvious. Bleached Arts successfully accomplished this with its first Bleach Festival early this year, and we see it in productions like Cockfight by The Farm, and the stunning Blanc de Blanc (reviewed last month).

Ruby Slipper Chronicles

Devised and performed by Aurelie Roque. Sideshow Project. The Basement. Arts Centre Gold Coast. 3rd and 4th November, 2017. Sideshow until 10th December.

Regional Arts Centres have to be innovative to stay alive, and the Gold Coast is no exception.

Boys Will Be Boys

By Melissa Bubnic. The Street, Directed by Caroline Stacey. The Street Theatre, ACT, 28 October – 11 November 2017

In her 2015 playscript Boys Will Be Boys, established Australian playwright Melissa Bubnic has penned an anti-fable focusing almost entirely on soulless corporate vampires who get what they don’t deserve.  (And if a couple of them evidence thoughts and feelings beyond their naked ambitions, it doesn’t alter their decisions or what they didn’t deserve.)

 

Godspell

By Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak. Hills Musical Theatre Company. Model Farms High School. Nov 3 – 11, 2017.

Husband and wife team John Brown (director) and Sue Brown (musical director), with choreographer Laurie Tancred, give this 2012 update of the musical a contemporary feel. Set in front of the safety fences of a construction site, with the cast in modern casual gear, the parables of the New Testament take a moralistic jump into the 21st century.

It Could Be Any One of Us

By Alan Ayckbourn. The Therry Dramatic Society. Arts Theatre, Adelaide. November 2nd-11th, 2017

Therry’s latest production It Could Be Any of Us is all about the details. Experienced director Kerrin White has looked beyond the text to draw out every satirical moment and bring us a fast-paced look at this family of failures.

The action takes place in the old English country home of the Chalke family; the rundown residence is home to a composer, a writer, a painter, a detective and a wayward teenager. Set design by White is so authentic you can almost smell the mildew caused by the leaking roof, while Mary Formosa has also done a fine job in dressing the set.

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