Reviews

The Adelaide Festival Centre and director Catherine Fitzgerald invite you to a night of sing-alongs and stunning solos, harmonising and heavenly praise, with a healthy helping of the spirituality that the season was built on, and the kind of electricity that only live music can generate...plus a couple of kooky clowns!

For its second “live-to-air” musical following last year’s The Sound of Music, NBC chose a show that has been dear to its rating-hearts for the past 60 years. Ever since the first screening of Mary Martin’s Broadway production of Peter Pan in 1955 which brought phenomenal ratings of 65 million viewers, it has been a perennial favourite for the Network.

Roleystone Theatre's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory seems a delicious end of year treat for families.

While I love the source material, I am not a fan of Richard George's adaptation of Roald Dahl's story (although it does have some lovely moments). Director Lys Tickner has worked hard to add life to this script which is over-laden with exposition and is written flat.

There was enough Dirty Dancing and fleshy beefcake on stage to elicit squeals of approval from women in the audience, who gave the evening the festive feel of a hen’s night.

Even if their husbands/boyfriends found it a more of a ‘chick’s show’ then no doubt they were still pleased to see a big smile on their date’s face.

Throbbing hips, provocative swivels and even the occasional face buried in a  convulsing crutch made it a saucy night out, in a clean cut 1960’s kind of way.