Reviews

I Wanna Be Mark Wahlberg

Created and Performed by Melody Rachel. Pride Festival. The Substation, Qtopia, Darlinghurst. June 9 & 10, 2025.

Melody Rachel’s solo show has been a work in progress for five years - but it still lasts only 40 minutes and has minimal script. 

Her latest version is at the old Substation of Sydney’s Qtopia in Darlinghurst as part of its Pride Festival through June.  Yet it needs more work. 

Legends (Of The Golden Arches)

By Joe Paradise Lui and Merlynn Tong. Melbourne Theatre Company / Rising Festival. Southbank Theatre, The Lawler. June 5 – 28, 2025.

Two friends hook up over an annual Hungry Ghost (Getai) festival to honour and pay respect to their grandfathers. Legends (Of the Golden Arches) is an entertaining and exciting piece of theatre.

Christ Almighty – A Comedy of Biblical Proportions

Book and Lyrics Tommy James Green. Composers Gianna Cheung Jeremy Kindl. Popular Playhouse Production. Director: Miriam Rihani. Flight Path Theatre, Marrickville, NSW. 5 – 21 June, 2025

If laughter is the best medicine, then the cast of Christ Almighty - A Comedy of Biblical Proportions measure it out plentifully in this funny irreverent musical satire. Reprising his 2023 performance, Giuseppe Rotondella as a “millennial Jesus” leads a group of “pseudo-revolutionary students and a sex worker” through Jerusalem in an irreligious romp of both biblical proportions and distortions!

A Streetcar Named Desire

By Tennessee Williams. National Theatre Live. A Young Vic / Joshua Andrews Co Production. Sharmill Films. Showing in Australian cinemas June 19th, 2025

Tennessee Williams is perhaps the best-known American playwright of the 20th Century. Famous for plays like The Glass Menagerie, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Rose Tattoo, Suddenly Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tine Roof and many more including the seminal A Streetcar Named Desire, he is indeed a prolific playwright.

Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

By Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler. Directed by Rebekah Hannah. Garrick Theatre, Guilford, WA. Jun 5-21, 2025

When Garrick announced that they were doing Sweeney Todd, there were more than a few raised eyebrows - questioning how to fit such a large show onto the handkerchief sized Garrick stage. Using minimal settings and foregoing a live band, for a quality backing track, Garrick have used a cast of 22 to stage this Victorian stye show.

Steel Magnolias

By Robert Harling. Gold Coast Little Theatre. May 23 – Jun 14, 2025

Steel Magnolias was beautiful.

The Wizard of Oz

By L Frank Baum. Music and Lyrics by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg. Produced by BLOC Music Theatre. Directed by Gareth Grainger. Her Majesty’s Theatre Ballarat. June 5th-15th, 2025

It’s more than 85 years since The Wizard of Oz burst onto our cinema screens and into our psyche. It is truly iconic and now a staple part of Community Theatre repertoire.

Sometimes the problem with an icon is that everyone expects to see a reproduction of the film, not possible on stage with any kind of budget. Fortunately, BLOC knows the show well, brings out a new production roughly every ten years, and chooses directors and casts with enough imagination to keep the show fresh whilst still paying homage to the original.

Kill Me

By Marina Otero. Performed by Marina Otero with Ana Cotoré, Josefina Gorostiza, Natalie Lopéz Godoy, Myriam Hedde-Adda & Tomás Pozzi. RISING Festival. Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio. 5 – 8 June 2025

The poster for Kill Me – three naked red-haired women in profile with guns – is provocative, sexy and intriguing.  Is that going to be on stage?  Yes, it is.  In fact, there are five naked women with guns and that image is central both to the strengths, but also perhaps the less successful aspects of this complex show. 

The Children

By Lucy Kirkwood. Produced by A Moveable Theatre and Amanda McErlean. Directed by Heidi Gledhill. Pip Theatre, Milton. 4th – 21st June 2025

Promotional image above by Naz Mulla: Julia Johnson as Hazel, Amanda McErlean as Rose, and Terry Hansen as Rob.

In an intimate seaside cottage soaked in beige and tension, The Children begins with a striking image: a well-groomed businesswoman in a muted green and orange suit, standing awkwardly in a kitchen with a bleeding nose. Something feels off.

Fat Pig: The Opera

Music by Matt Boehler and libretto by Miriam Gordon-Stewart. Presented by BK Opera and Forest Collective. Directed by Kate Millett, Music Director: Evan J Lawson. fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. 5 – 8 June 2025

This opera is adapted from Neil LaBute’s 2004 play which addresses the social and psychological discrimination against obesity. It is a story that exposes some of the most harmful and vicious social pressure to conform to normative beauty standards and the abhorrent attitudes peddled by some sections of society. The play and the opera are essentially about the practice of fat shaming and the stigma and harm it creates. 

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