Reviews

My Bicycle Loves You gets its name silent movie slapstick bicycle antics, among the many vaudeville sequences featured in film entertainments exhibited by an early Australasian travelling picture show family, incorporated in and inspirational to this production.

Funny old art form, classic opera. Sublime music goes hand in hand with a mandatory suspension of disbelief. Currently I blame Puccini, who in this case wrote 1904 music of great range, maturity and power for a fifteen year old lead character. He could easily have aged his tragic geisha in her thirties: the story would still have worked. But, no; Cio-Cio-San, nicknamed Butterfly, tells the worried US Consul that she’s fifteen ‑ after he has guessed that she’s ten!

It’s summer, it’s hot, the kids have worn out all the new Xmas toys and you in the bargain. They’ve seen every movie, used up all their phone credit and they are starting the litany of “I’m boreds”.

You could do a lot worse than introduce them to a good old fashioned panto – a huge dollop of fun, farce and fantasy where they get to laugh, boo, hiss and shout out things in their normal outside voices .

Theatre of Image, under the leadership of Kim Carpenter, has the knack of producing beautiful looking productions which appeal to many senses in both adults and children.

Snow on Mars, which combines circus acrobatics, digital animation, choreography, music and video, is probably the company's most ambitious production to date.

As per the company's high standards, it was very attractive to look at, but I felt the combination of so many ingredients slightly overwhelmed the story.