Reviews

Revisor

Kidd Pivot. Adelaide Festival. Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide. March 17 – 19, 2023

As I sit in Her Majesty’s Theatre there is an excited buzz anticipating the extraordinary. What a difference a year makes, very few masks and very happy faces.

We aren’t disappointed. Revisor, a work by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathan Young, known collectively, along with their company of eight dancers, as Kidd Pivot is an amazing piece of theatre!

Don Quixote

The Australian Ballet with Orchestra Victoria. March 15 – 25, 2023 at State Theatre, Melbourne, April 8 – 25 at Sydney Opera House. Livestream March 24th.

For its first ballet in its 60th year, the Australian Ballet has staged Rudolf Nureyev’s film version of Don Quixote, on stage. It’s joyous and colorful, and highly technical.  Nureyev’s choreography is some of the most complicated the Australian Ballet has seen, and it all takes place in gloriously flamboyant costumes in and around filmic sets. Whilst it’s far from the perfect ballet and even further from the source material, Don Quixote is a crowd pleaser and rightfully so.

Flesh Disease

Writer: Diane Stubbings. Concept and Director: Romi Kupfer. Projection Artist: Jenna Eriksen. La Mama HQ. March 15 -25 2023

This play strives to shed light on the experience of living with a mental illness for a group of five women who have been meeting in a craft group for some time. The characters have built trust and comfort in the group and the play starts and then drops in and out of sharing quite ordinary verbal and social interactions.

Then there are episodes of intrusive lighting and sounds which are the background to expressive movement and disrupted verbal expressions of distress.

Catch Me If You Can

Book by Terrance McNally. Music by Marc Shaiman. Lyrics by Scott Whittman and Marc Shaiman. Northern Light Theatre Company. The Shedley Theatre, Elizabeth. March 17 – April 1, 2023

To quote Mary Poppins, Northern Light Theatre Company’s production of Catch Me If You Can is “Practically perfect in every way”!

Based on the unbelievable true story of one of the most famous con artists in history, Frank Abagnale Jr., Catch Me If You Can is a rousing musical set in the 1960s.

 

The Dog Logs

By C J Johnson. Hunters Hill Theatre Company. Directed by Maggie Scott. Club Ryde. 17 March – 2 April, 2023

Oh. My. Dog! (or  O.M.D.) Hunters Hill Theatre have “Let the Dogs Out” onto the stage at Club Ryde and they are doing their doggie best to tell their doggie tales!

Lorde (with MUNA and Stellie)

Adelaide Entertainment Centre. Adelaide Festival. 16th March, 2023

Lorde’s highly anticipated Solar Power world tour has finally arrived in Adelaide, Australia. It’s a welcome return for her fans after a hiatus of nearly 10 years. The Adelaide Festival concert, initially billed for the Adelaide Oval Village Green, went ahead to an adoring crowd of fans at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre on Thursday night.

The Hitmen

By Mish Wittrup. The Peacock Theatre (Tas). Director- Tai Gardner. Production. Designer – Megan Kenna. Lighting – Chris ‘Wolfe’ McBride. 17-25 March 2023

The Hitmen could be about the would-be assassins. It might be about the callous nature of the corporate world and the insensitive process of the group job interview where, to succeed over the other applicants is not, it seems, dissimilar to the justification of ones very existence. But The Hitmen is also about the reasons people choose to stay alive, especially when death appears to be imminent or even preferable.  

The Mystery of the Valkyrie

Written and directed by Michael Futcher. Produced by Woodward Productions. Playhouse Theatre QPAC. March 11th-19th, 2023

In the glossy and elegant programme for The Mystery of the Valkyrie, producer Alex Woodward talks about his passion for “gateway theatre” where artistic integrity is maintained at the same time as reaching non-theatre-going public, as well as seasoned patrons. The fact that he has succeeded - so brilliantly in this case - is due mainly to the artistic vision he has shared with writer/director Michael Futcher.

Silly Little Things

Written & performed by Laura Knaggs. The Butterfly Club, Melbourne CBD. 14 – 18 March, 2023

Laura Knaggs is a great storyteller and comedian.  In this one-woman show, she plays Rosie, a hapless millennial florist beset by those silly little things that can ruin your life: a breach with your best friend – and you don’t know why – being socially gauche, getting fall-down drunk, being totally broke because your business is failing, having an aggravating if harmless regular customer, enduring a sullen, hostile-dependent employee, battling a nasty, malicious old witch of a neighbour, who smashes the owls you bought to keep off her birds, getting desperat

The Sheep Song

Adelaide Festival, Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre. March 16 – 19, 2023

Unlike Snowball's condensation of the Seven Commandments of Animalism “Four legs, good, two legs bad” in George Orwell’s satirical, allegorical novel Animal Farm,  the main character in The Sheep Song believes that two legs will fulfil all of his dreams.