Reviews

Prima Facie

By Suzie Miller. Black Swan Theatre Company production presented by Carriageworks, Sydney. Directed by Kate Champion. 2 – 12 July, 2025

At first sight, or as a lawyer might say ‘prima facie’, Sydney’s Carriageworks theatre is too big for a one-person play. Constructed in 2007 from the giant Eveleigh Railway Workshops, the theatre is vast, seating over 600, and you’re asking for trouble if you want to put on a play that features just the one woman. But that’s exactly what Carriageworks have done, inviting Western Australia’s Black Swan Theatre to bring their one-woman production of Prima Facie here. And it works.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane

By Martin McDonagh. Free-Rain Theatre. Directed by Cate Clelland. A.C.T. Hub, 25 June – 2 July 2025.

With its central relationship a mix of “Steptoe & Son” and Baby Jane, Martin McDonagh’s 1996 play pits 70-year-old hypochondriac Irish widow Mag against the daughter who has looked after her for the past 20 years, Maureen, as Maureen finally finds love in her lonely existence.

Legally Blonde The Musical

Music and Lyrics by Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin. Book by Heather Hach. Based on the novel by Amanda Brown and movie. MustseeShows. Ascham Packer Theatre, Edgecliff, NSW. July 2-6, 2025

There hasn’t been an active community theatre company in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs for decade and based on the number of talented female dancers on stage, it’s been long overdue.

Only founded this year, the company chose an apt musical for a theatre inside a private girl’s school - the very well-equipped Ascham Packer Theatre.

Dear Son

Adapted by Isaac Drandic and John Harvey Based on the book by Thomas Mayo. Directed by Isaac Drandic. Presented by Queensland Theatre. Bille Brown Theatre, 28 June – 19 July 2025

There’s a particular kind of silence that falls over an audience when something true is being spoken on stage. Queensland Theatre’s Dear Son is full of those moments. In this world premiere adaptation of Thomas Mayo’s celebrated book of letters, co-adaptors Isaac Drandic and John Harvey have not only preserved the emotional potency of the source material, but elevated it, crafting a visually rich, sonically stirring, and emotionally generous piece of theatre that sings with both ancestral reverence and contemporary urgency.

Hopelessly Devoted

By Elise Grieg. Art in Motion. Directed by Lys Tickner. City of Gosnells Don Russell Performing Arts Centre, Thornlie, WA. June 13-21, 2025

Art in Motion are having an Olivia Newton-John mini-season, preceding their upcoming production of Xanadu with the Australian play, Hopelessly Devoted, described as “a family drama interwoven with the heart-warming songs of Olivia Newton-John.

Merrily We Roll Along

By Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. WAAPA Third Year Music Theatre. Directed by Tom Heath. The Roundhouse Theatre, WAAPA, Edith Cowan University, Mt Lawley, WA. Jun 13-19, 2025

Following on from the success of the recent Broadway revival, WAAPA Third Year Music Theatre students presented Merrily We Roll Along, supported with an orchestra comprised of WAAPA Music Students and designed and crewed predominantly by WAAPA Production and Design Students.

1984

By George Orwell. Adapted by Shake & Stir Theatre Co. Directed by Michael Futcher, produced by Ross Balbuziente. Comedy Theatre, 240 Exhibition St, Melbourne. 1-6 July 2025.

The artistic directors of Shake & Stir, Nelle Lee and Nick Skubij, bring Big Brother back to the stage in a very faithful and confronting production. As a nationally recognised Australian touring theatre company Shake & Stir have produced a wide range of productions and literary adaptations. This production is a very faithful adaptation of the book and preserves not only its main themes but also the atmosphere of the very grim dystopian future the novel depicts and predicts.

Blackbird

By David Harrower. HER Productions in Association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company. Director Pippa Thoroughgood. KXT on Broadway. 25 June – 5 July, 2025

I can’t imagine how long it took Scottish playwright David Harrower to find the words that make the dialogue in this play so faultlessly natural and agonisingly harrowing. Nor can I imagine the amount of challenging research, discussion, emotion and pressure that must go into every production of this disturbing, unnerving, sad, yet strangely hopeful, piece of theatre.

Death and the Maiden

By Ariel Dorfman. Cairns Little Theatre. Director: Matt O’Connor. Rondo Theatre, Cairns. June 27 to July 5, 2025

This psychological drama is set in post-Pinochet Chile as that country transitioned from a long, brutal dictatorship to a democracy.

All Is Good... In the Glow of the Moonlight

By Simon Starr & Joseph Sherman. Created by Isaac Babel, Simon Starr, Joseph Sherman & Brian Lipson. Theatre Works Explosive Factory. 25 June – 5 July 2025

We climb the very steep stairs up to the Explosives Factory playing space.  A big man in a bowler hat and snakeskin shoes greets us – in Spanish.  (A mystery never solved.)  He’s jolly but so big he’s a little intimidating.  He directs us to a table where we can have some soup and black bread.  If he likes the look of you, you may get a tiny nip of vodka...  La Traviata blasts out, filling the space.  Meanwhile, on a platform above the memorabilia littered stage, sit two men, motionless, facing away from each other.  When th

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