Reviews

’Twas the Night Before Christmas

By Ken Ludwig. Harbour Theatre. Directed by Jane Sherwood. Camelot Theatre, Mosman Park, WA. Nov 27 - Dec 13, 2020

Harbour Theatre are embracing the season, with their celebratory offering Ken Ludwig’s ’Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Ripcord

By David Lindsay-Abaire. State Theatre Company SA. Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre. 13 Nov - 13 Dec 2020

Ripcord is, on the surface, a rollicking comedic gem.  However, as one expects from playwright Lindsay-Abaire, the layers beneath are where the riches of the story lie.

Securing a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007 for Rabbit Hole, American playwright, lyricist and screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire excels in astute juxtapositions of comedy and tragedy within insightfully written texts.

Seagulls… flying through the times of plague

Created by Gianluigi Rotondo; directed by Roxana Paun. Monash University Student Theatre. Digital Festival. Melbourne Fringe Festival. 26-28 November 2020

‘It’s not where you’re born that matters, it’s where you choose to die – that is your country.’  Such is the motto of this compilation show, made up of migration stories, in prose and verse (told directly to camera), original music, resonant images of sea and shoreline, wheeling seagulls, and original artwork.  The speakers – storytellers and poets – are all international students from the most diverse range of countries – Lebanon, Rabat, South Africa, Italy, Romania and more.  Helena Valeria Manoussios was born in Austral

The Importance of Being Earnest

By Oscar Wilde. Garrick Theatre, Guildford WA. Directed by Douglas Sutherland Bruce. Nov 26-Dec 12, 2020

The Importance of Being Earnest, while being one of the most oft produced plays in community theatre, is still a very popular choice for both audiences and theatre companies. Well done, as this production is, it cannot fail to charm - and remains an extremely funny play despite, as director Douglas Sutherland Bruce points out in his program notes, some of the satire now falling flat.

A Stone’s Throw

Cross Encounters. Melbourne Fringe – Live Streaming Broadcast. Nov 25 – 28, 2020.

A Stone’s Throw is an idiom meaning a short distance away. It is also the title of the new show brought to the Melbourne Fringe festival by Cross Encounters: a new intercultural Performing Arts Company that aims to promote the growth of cultural collaborations with Asia.

Jude Perl’s Greatest Hits: So Fresh Spring 2020

Written & Performed by Jude Perl. Digital Fringe. Melbourne Fringe Festival 26, 27 & 28 November, 2020

Jude Perl has four Green Room Awards and a Best Cabaret Melbourne Fringe 2018 Award.  Her songs are witty, intricate, clever, ironic, rather self-mocking and musically sophisticated (could that be a problem?) and she writes and sings them all herself.  So, with this show, we might wonder why isn’t she a star?  Why aren’t her ‘greatest hits’, actual hits?  These are questions she asks too – and answers - in her very first song in this show, a song that also asks, ‘why can’t people respect me?’ 

Welcome to Bunt

Melbourne Digital Fringe Festival. Nov 24 – 29, 2020

Welcome to Bunt is the new show devised by two versatile creative performers, Sophie Joske and Elly Squire, for the Melbourne Digital Fringe Festival during COVID. This is an innovative, vaudevillian-inspired, low budget show that reflects on the broader consequences of lockdown and isolation, while addressing the urgent need to get out of one’s cave and see the real world again.

Away

Play by Michael Gow. Griffith University Third-Year Acting Students. Director: Timothy Hall. Burke Street Studio Theatre, Woolloongabba, Qld. 24-28 Nov 2020

Michael Gow’s classic Australian play has been given a light and airy production by Timothy Hall with the third year graduating drama students from Griffith University.

Gow’s play, set in 1967, about three families from different socio-economic backgrounds who converge on the Gold Coast for their annual summer holidays, has been revived constantly and studied by at least two generations of school children since its premiere in 1986.

Muse 90401

By Fadik Sevin Atasoy. Directed by Erdal Besikcioglu. Melbourne Fringe Festival, 12 -29 November 2020.

Fadik Sevin Atasoy performs this one-woman show where she interrogates the treatment of some important artistic muses. This show is beautifully crafted and opens with a pianist sitting at a grand piano who provides a delightful and evocative musical accompaniment. When Atasoy enters she mostly works in a spotlight and employs singing, dancing and stylised movement to question the treatment of the women who have inspired some of the most notable literary figures in history.

Ladies Write Letters of Lemony Love

Written & Directed by Maeve Hook. Digital Fringe. Melbourne Fringe Festival. 24 & 25, 28 & 29 November 2020

Do not be misled by the rather twee title.  In 1901 and into 1902, two intelligent, articulate young women, Isobel (Meg Hickey) and Henrietta (Maeve Hook) write to each other.  They’re friends in the remote rural town of Toobloodyfaraway in the wheat belt of south-west Victoria.  At first, their letters are brief and bright girlish notes.  But then they are separated when Henrietta moves to Melbourne. 

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