Reviews

Since ancient times, picaresque fables have followed an often irredeemable anti-hero through a long journey of life and reparation. This tale, serialised in a Chinese Australian newspaper from 1909, follows an opium-addicted émigré from Guangdong to the Victorian goldfields and onto early Melbourne opportunities for more wealth and depravity.

Soon after making it to the ‘final four’ on The Voice Australia 2022, the now Melbourne-based Thando changed her name to Thndo, signed with a new management team (August MGMT), and embarked on an East coast tour.  In the past Thndo has performed to huge crowds at festivals including Bluesfest, Womadelaide, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Groovin the Moo, Big Sound, Jungle Love, and Woodford Folk Festival.

It seems that this production, postponed from last year’s COVID pile-up, has arrived exactly on time. Michael Frayn’s excellent play from 1984 is about an architect who wants to build higher and higher, cramming more people into an allotted space. And this week a local Sydney mayor called the same general plan, which had received high praise from the NSW Premier at a Sydney Leadership Dialogue, a ‘free-for-all for developers’ and ‘a Trojan horse for more shoebox-size apartments in suburbs that can barely cope’. Ouch.

Emily ‘Mickey’ Hahn was just 19 when she drove across America 1924 – dressed as a man to avoid any trouble. The remainder of her life was no less exciting, living in Africa, Asia, Europe, and America through tumultuous times of world history, writing articles, prolifically publishing books, and taking lovers where she went.