Reviews

‘You can find me later on Linkedin!’ calls Helena to her departing ex-sweetheart. Such a thing is permissible in this version of Shakespeare, which mixes modern quips with some heavy Elizabethan verse-making. Glenn Elston, director of Melbourne’s Australian Shakespeare Company for no less than 35 years, has mastered this mixing trick. Here he comes up with a fresh and convincing directorial take on an old and oft-told story.

Johan Inger’s startling ballet Carmen shifts our focus from the famed femme fatale to the defeated Don Jose who swoons over her.  Callum Linnane excels as the sexually uncertain prison guard – having to lock up Carmen – dancing tall and lyrical, then crumpled into angular gestures by his unrequited love.  

Linnane is beautifully expressive of Inger’s cocktail of classical and contemporary movement (and music) in this dark psychoanalytical interruption.

Popular across Asia – and MICF stalwart - comedian Kuah Jenhan finally got himself a ‘real job’.  At thirty-five.  In advertising.  For the same reasons anyone gets a real job.  His comedian mates accused him of selling out.  Kuah admits that’s true; he did sell out – for a regular wage, health care, paid holidays, superannuation…  For him, the lot of comedians who don’t sell out, who keep their integrity, is ‘crying in the streets’ – Kuah sees them as he rides past in his car.  Mean, huh?

Pop culture meets reality TV to retell the story of Joan of Arc and her cult of personality, with a contemporary lens, in a highly theatrical style. Curtin Theatre Arts and the Hayman Theatre Company present Joan Must Die - I Never Really Liked Her Anyway, in only its second ever production.