Reviews

Over the years I have enjoyed many ELT productions. Their intimate venue is ideal for plays, but not for large-scale musicals, so Nunsense, with its small cast, was an ideal choice.

It was also one of their best.

At least three of the five performers had professional experience, and all had to sing, dance and act. Of course, the acting was strong, but they sang well and the dancing was surprisingly good. At one stage four of them launched into a tap dance!

Early evening sunlight floods a large bare room in North Melbourne’s Arts House – no lighting grid above – it’s as if to say, ‘no artifice here’.  As if.  Brian Lipson enters in an arresting, intriguing costume – half man, half woman, but far more detailed than merely that.  A crown, a school blazer, a string of pearls, half an Elizabethan ruff, a 50s schoolbag, a sword.  One (rather shapely) leg in pantaloons and hose and a black high heel pump, the other in jeans and a heavy work boot.  As the light fades to dim during the

There was a joyous sound coming from the pit, which made this night a special experience. It was the harpsichord played with a lush and playful intensity as part of a first class orchestra under the baton of Dr Steven Stanke.

You could close your eyes and feel yourself taken back in time to a court in 18thcentury Europe with intrigue and scandal behind every door.

The Butterfly Theatre’s latest project, Beer Theatre, consists of three two-hander plays, of around half an hour each, presented in the intimate setting of The Wheatsheaf Hotel.  Though each of the plays are focused on very different characters, they have themes and plot points in common. Each one involves a younger character causing disruption in the life of an older one, with strained attempts at affability giving way to darker conflict as the repressed insecurities of both parties rise to the surface.