Reviews

Daffodils wasinspired by a true love story that began in 1964 in New Zealand.

Told through the music that tracked a meeting, a courtship, a marriage, a family and, unfortunately, a divorce, it has all the pace and pizzazz of modern musical theatre without the usual trappings.

Sometimes funny, sometimes a little bit sad, often loud, but never slow, Daffodils has been selected to feature at the prestigious Traverse Theatre in the upcoming Edinburgh Festival Fringe – an honour that has not been afforded a NZ company since 1999.

In 2014 Tantrum Youth Arts were invited on board as 'Artist in Residence' for the now defunct Wyong Shire Council (hello CCSC). Highly regarded playwright Vanessa Bates conducted a series of workshops and candid interviews with Central Coast youth – and in the process became enmeshed in undoubtedly the most typical of Coastie phenomenona – the eternal commute by train between Sydney and Newcastle.

The show must go on – and if it’s not the show as advertised, here’s another one.

Every ghost story needs to redefine the afterlife. In Kit Brookman’s pitch black tragicomedy Heaven, the dead can be reborn as flesh but have little memory of their old life. The play opens on bully schoolboy Stewart (Tim Abdallah) explaining to his friend Max (Vitas Varnas) that their school acquaintance Angela had died. Stewart makes light of it, disparaging Angela as weird and having no friends, but as he speaks it becomes clear that he saw the accident and that he’s hiding trauma under macho bluster.