Reviews

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.

There hasn’t been an active community theatre company in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs for a 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.

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.

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.