By Aaron Sorkin. Castle Hill Players. Pavilion Theatre, Castle Hill Showgrounds. Feb 3 – 25, 2023
For 2 hours and 40 mins, A Few Good Men held the audience on a knife edge, so invested there was spontaneous applause before the final words were spoken.
The Improv Conspiracy Theatre. Midsumma. Level 1, 19 Meyers Place Melbourne. 2-5 February, 2023
Jayden Masciulli, Simon Hawkings and Allen Dorsey gather the audience and carry them through a frisky and hilarious exploration of the anxieties of being a “functioning gay person in Melbourne”.
By Lucy Holz. Midsumma Festival. The MC Showroom, Prahran. 31 January – 11 February 2023
The publicity shot for A Year of Dating in the Midsumma Program shows delicate female fingers feeling (probing?) the petals of a rose. The iconography is clear enough. The show, however, is anything but delicate. It tells of twelve dates, ranging from the merely dull to the outrageously gross.
By Emmanuelle Mattana. The Maybe Pile. Directed by Marni Mount. Midsumma Festival. fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. 2-12 February 2023.
This sharp-witted play puts a mirror up to the arrogance that characterises the entitled and highly spoilt young men being churned out of private schools across western culture. The reflection that is cast is rather ugly, but it is also extremely humorous. The play is set during the preparation for an important debate whose outcome could significantly impact the future ambitions of the four members of the team.
By Melanie Tait. Sydney Festival 2023, at The Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Directed by Janine Watson. 26 January – 4 March 2023
This play has been a long time coming. Caught up in the COVID mess, it now emerges over two years later, running behind playwright Melanie Tait’s hugely successful major hit The Appleton Ladies Potato Race, first as an Ensemble play, soon to be released as a movie. No doubt the Race is more whimsical than the current play, but it certainly hit home harder.
By Mary Anne Butler. Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre. An INK World Premiere. Red Stitch, East St Kilda. 26 January – 19 February 2023
With Wittenoom, Mary Anne Butler has achieved something remarkable. Her play is ‘poetic drama’, a form that is extremely difficult to make work. In some hands it can be wearying, even pretentious - unless one is a poet and a dramatist: Butler is both. This is an intense, passionate play, sharp and evocative in its imagery, visceral in its emotions.
Bunbury Productions. Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre. 1–5th February 2023
First performed in early 2022, Mono is a three-person satirical romp. It is 90 minutes of wit, fun and extremely clever writing, presented as 10 Scenes and is evocative of the comedy style of the 1970s to the 1990s where revues full of clever, pithy dialogue were de rigueur. The emphasis is not on elaborate props (they are almost non-existent), glamorous sets (there is not one) and flashy lighting (well they did change the light colour several times).
By Ella Filar & Cerise De Gelder. La Mama Courthouse, 349 Drummond Street, Carlton. 1-12 February 2023.
This show is very strong conceptually; the idea that the pandemic has transformed society into a collective medical and social experiment that has reduced all members into laboratory rats is a powerful underlying idea. The rat imagery is gradually but emphatically introduced into the show. As the performers recount their experiences of lockdown (and their gradual descent into neurosis or psychosis) the rat imagery becomes louder and stronger.
By Ty Autry. Midsumma Festival. The Butterfly Club, Melbourne. Jan 30 – Feb 4, 2023
A Southern Fairytale is a beautifully conceived show written and starring Ty Autry in a one-hour revelatory monologue chronicled in six chapters, set-in modern-day Georgia, USA. Ty Autry plays Alex Belmont, who grew up in the Deep South, a challenging time for him, living in a small town with a church on every corner and Confederacy flags flying high, were denial and anti-gay sentiments were rife.
