Reviews

The Boy From Oz

Music & Lyrics: Peter Allen. Book: Nick Enright. Brisbane Arts Theatre. Directors: John Boyce & Ruby Foster. Musical Director: Lara Boyle. Choreography: Sarah Jane Jones & Jess Paige. Arts Theatre, Brisbane, 5 Mar – 23 Apr 2016

This year Brisbane Arts Theatre is celebrating its 80th year of production, a milestone in local theatre, and what better way to pop the fizz than a production of Australia’s favourite home-grown musical The Boy From Oz.

The bio-musical about the life of songwriter Peter Allen, who rose from small-town pub entertainer to headlining at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, is the stuff of legend and especially when his life also connected with two of America’s superstar legends, Judy Garland and Liza Minnelli.

The Peach Season

By Debra Oswald. University of Adelaide Theatre Guild. Directed by John Graham. The Little Theatre, University Of Adelaide. March 10-19, 2016

The University of Adelaide Theatre Guild showcases yet another fine contemporary Australian play, with a solid staging of Debra Oswald’s The Peach Season. This bittersweet coming of age story rehashes many familiar, timeworn conventions of the genre, but contains enough unexpected, idiosyncratic nuances to emerge as fresh and relevant to a modern audience. The intelligent handling of universal themes, combined with candid performances from the entire cast and finely detailed production design result in a deeply immersive theatre experience.

Pennsylvania Avenue

By Joanna Murray-Smith. Directed by Simon Phillips. Presented by Duet Cremorne Theatre, QPAC Brisbane. 3-19 March, 2016

I love impressions: it's always a great source of amusement for me to take off famous personalities, even better if it's an improved version of the original artist, as I've seen before, but when you see a performer in a solo act who can do the 'verbal and the vocal', and with such aplomb, all one can do is beam with a little more than just admiration.

And this is pretty much what the audience did.

Nelken (Carnations)

Tanztheater Wuppertal/Pina Bausch. Adelaide Festival of Arts. Festival Theatre. March 9th – 12th, 2016

Tanztheater Wuppertal welcomed choreographer Pina Bausch as dance director back in 1973; with this appointment began 36 years of collaborations that transformed the way the world viewed this genre. She gave dancers a voice and developed a combination of theatre and dance that was her personal social commentary. Although Bausch passed away in 2009, we are blessed that this company has resurrected this exceptional piece.

In The Heights

Music and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Book by Quiara Alegria Hudes. Directed by James Cutler. A StageArt Production. The National Theatre. March 11 and 12, 2016.

It’s back…the musical that caught us all off guard last year and has us gasping for breath. On a rainy Melbourne night we piled into the quaint St Kilda National theatre and managed to dry out in just a few minutes.

The 39 Steps

Adapted by Parick Barlow from an original concept by Simon Corble & Nobby Dimon. Director: Felicity Burke. Campbelltown Theatre Group Inc. Town Hall Theatre. March 4 – 19, 2016.

I had mixed feelings about this show.

Songbook

Music and Lyrics by Craig Christie. Produced and directed by Nick Hedger and Ben Nicholson. Home Grown at Chapel off Chapel. March 6, 2016

With yet another Home Grown theatrical event this Sunday 13th March, it’s hard to keep up with the Dynamic Duo of Hedger and Nicholson – and yet last Sunday, a first in the Song Book Series, was a musical theatre treat worth writing about.

Deluge

By Phillip Kavanagh. Director: Nescha Jelk. Tiny Bricks in association with Brink Productions & Adelaide Festival of Arts. Plant 1, Bowden. 8-13 March, 2016.

This year's Adelaide Festival of Arts has thus far been commendably adventurous, unafraid to take an audience out of its comfort zone, willing to stretch the parameters of theatre beyond what feels familiar. Deluge is an experiment that should prove interesting and rewarding for all those willing and eager to be taken somewhere new and different; the unique concept behind this venture makes for an intriguing, excitingly unpredictable experience.

Golem

Adelaide Festival. Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre - March 8–13, 2016, then The Roslyn Packer Theatre from March 16 - 26.

London-based company 1927 has brought a unique multimedia theatre production to the Adelaide Festival and in doing so has without doubt created a Festival hit. Golem is gob-smacking; it’s wonderful.

Machu Picchu

By Sue Smith. Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia. Wharf 1 Theatre - 3 March to 9 April 2016, then Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre – 13 Apr – May 1.

Haunted by a depressing cancer diagnosis, Sue Smith draws in this new play on own journey back to living in the moment and smelling the roses.

Paul is an idealistic, self-doubting engineer whose esteem is further challenged when he’s paralysed in a car accident.  From his hospital bed, with his academic wife Gabby, he daydreams back to moments in their relationship which they always wanted to remember as bliss - their engagement, the birth of their daughter Lucy. 

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