Reviews

The Wolves

By Sara Delappe. WAAPA Third Year Acting Students. Directed by Anna Houston. Enright Studio, WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, WA. May 18-20, 2023

WAAPA Third Year Acting Students have been split for the latest performance seasons. The women appear in this production of The Wolves, with their male classmates performing in brother production Fatherland. Directed with precision by Anna Houston, The Wolves follows a teenage girls’ indoor soccer team, over a six-week period.

Mr Bailey’s Minder

By Debra Oswald. The Guild Theatre, Rockdale. May 12 – June 10, 2023

Mr. Bailey’s minder – it’s a job no-one wants. Except Therese – desperately searching for something that will turn her life around, she needs to make it work, despite the odds.

Aging, once-famous painter Leo, now a spiteful, aging, self-destructive alcoholic, needs a full-time carer to remain in his eccentric home, decorated (if that’s the word for it) with his abstractions - yet he has driven away all previous comers, driving his daughter to distraction.

Fatherland

By Scott Graham, Karl Hyde and Simon Stephens. WAAPA Third Year Acting Students. Directed by Shane Anthony. Enright Studio, WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, WA. May 18-20, 2023

Fatherland is presented by the male WAAPA Third Year Acting Students and is designed, built and crewed by WAAPA Production and Design Students. Presented in tandem with the female students’ production of The Wolves, and played in the same venue, Fatherland is directed with style by Shane Anthony.

The Lighthouse Girl Saga

By Jenny Davis and Hellie Turner, based on the books by Dianne Wolfer. Theatre 180. Directed by Stuart Halusz. ACE Cinemas Midland, WA. May 19-28, 2023

Theatre 180’s The Lighthouse Girl Saga is told through their original concept CinemaStage, which pairs live acting on a temporary stage in a theatre, against a full cinematic backdrop, allowing the immediacy, intimacy, and intuition of live theatre to be paired with the intense imagery and high impact of cinema. The Lighthouse Girl Saga merges the four books of Dianne Wolfer’s Lighthouse Girl series - Lighthouse Girl.

Burrbgaja Yalirra 2

Presented by PICA and Marrugeku. Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth Cultural Centre, WA. May 17-20, 2023

Burrbgaja Yalirra is Yawuru for “dancing forwards” and this production showcases artists who have performed in recent Marrugeku productions and allowed them to develop their own culturally informed contemporary dance works. There are three very different dance works on the program.

Moth

By Declan Greene. Theatre Works, St Kilda. 18 May – 3 June 2023

The great virtue of Moth is that it takes us into the world and the feelings of misfits, the rejected, the spurned, the picked-on and persecuted – and does not ask us to feel sorry for them. 

HMS Pinafore

By W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of WA. Directed by Paul Treasure. Dolphin Theatre, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, WA. May 18-27, 2023

It may be 145 years since the first production of HMS Pinafore, but The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of WA’s current sell-out production shows that this show can still pull a crowd, and capacity audiences for this production at the Dolphin will not be disappointed with Paul Treasure’s slightly modernised, fresh production.

Big Sing: The Sorcerer

By Gilbert and Sullivan. State Opera South Australia. Her Majesty’s Theatre – Grote St, Adelaide. May 21, 2023

What a splendid way to finish the G&S Fest. State Opera SA have done it again - The Sorcerer is a hit!

W S Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s third collaboration (if you count Thespis, rarely performed due to a large percentage of the work being lost), The Sorcerer had a small initial run of 175 performances and provided George Grossmith (the original G&S comedian) with a gift of a role, John Wellington Wells, the travelling sorcerer with a few tricks up his sleeve and one of the hardest patter songs in the repertoire.

UTOPIAS

Australian String Quartet, Queensland Conservatorium Theatre, Brisbane. 19 May 2023

Adelaide’s UKARIA group aims to connect artists, audiences and creativity. In 2010 one of their projects was to reunite a set of stringed instruments made in the 18th century and put them into the hands of Australia’s most outstanding string quartet. These were two violins, a viola and a cello made by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Italian luthier and one of the most respected instrument-makers of our time. These instruments – worth more than $6 million – are now played exclusively by the Australian String Quartet.

Gypsy

Music by Jules Styne, Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Book by Arthur Laurents. The Spotlight Theatrical Company, Gold Coast. Directed by David Valks. 18th May -10 June, 2023

It’s becoming a cliché to say “Spotlight has another triumph on its hands.” But clichés are only clichés because they happen so often. The standard at this Gold Coast community theatre could best be described as ‘excellence on a budget”. Their commitment to every production provides marvellous entertainment to the community at a fraction of the cost of any ticket to a mainstream show.

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