Reviews

I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve it but with Anything Goes the musical gods have sent us the most glorious musical-comedy package in years. A perfect cast bring Cole Porter’s quintessential piece of 1930s fluff brilliantly to life.

One of great British playwright Harold Pinter’s most innovative, thought provoking and subtly humorous scripts is given an extremely plodding, unimaginative and heavy-handed staging from the State Theatre Company of South Australia. Some bravura acting from the leading players and the compelling wit of Pinter’s words are the only things that save it from being a complete disaster, as the intrusive, monotonous soundtrack, coupled with some really leaden direction, serves to drain so much life out of the story being told onstage.

Human relations, human foibles, human obsessions, human systems of family and government - all of these themes continue to provide rich and relevant material for dramatists, but not every play dealing with this kind of subject matter proves equally durable down the tracks of time. Adapt Enterprises have, happily, demonstrated David Williamson's The Perfectionist to be a work of enduring strength and intrinsic interest, more than thirty years after its premiere production.

Ariel Dorfman’s powerful and visceral play, set in a post Fascist, newly democratic, South American country (Dorfman is from Chile), is full of passion and intensity and themes of vengeance, paranoia, forgiveness and moral ambiguity. Or it should be. Please do not judge it by this lack-lustre, passionless production.