Reviews

Rent is a rock musical loosely based on Puccini’s La Boheme, and narrates the story of impoverished artists living in the Village of New York during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. The show’s book, music, and lyrics creator, Jonathon Larson, died suddenly the night before its off-Broadway opening in 1996. The show ran for twelve years and has continued to run as a touring and international show since.

Cinderella, a children’s play written and directed by Natalie Trengove, with original music and lyrics by Jim Fury and Donna McGlinn, follows Cinderella as she overcomes the hardships of being her step-family’s servant.

The Narmada River is classified as the oldest river in India and the only one to flow in opposite direction to the other rivers. It is the mother of all the rivers and known to have purifying qualities personified as a divine lady - the goddess Narmada in the Hindu religion.

The Wrong Gods is written by S. Shakhidharan and co-directed with Hannah Goodwin. You may know the playwright from his previous, critically acclaimed work Counting and Cracking - an epic three-and half-hour cross-generational Sri Lankan immigration story with fifty different characters.

I purposely did not read the show description before heading to this Rising show. There is something in me that believes that a performance piece should deliver itself to the audience. Ideally the piece should land in me, the empty vessel. My feeling body should receive the work. Hopefully the show will unfold its poetry in front of me without prior knowledge.