Reviews

Thalia Joan bursts into the room with a megaphone, in a clinging, glamorous evening dress and comfy shoes and launches into her self-deprecating, ironic, carefully observed, and utterly relatable 45 minutes of sharing about her life. While many topics are touched on, growing up with a mother and grandmother, work and issues with a boss, ex-boyfriends and the differences in generations; the core of the show is her response to an internet quiz the algorithm sent her to identify whether she is giving up.

In 1968, Elvis-mania was fading fast – teenagers screamed instead at the Beatles, the radio stations blasted Dylan and the Stones, rather than Presley. Exhausted from a schedule of acting in one cookie-cutter movie after another, Elvis was depressed and most thought that was how he would fade away from the music industry. Instead, he worked around his hardline manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker and rewrote a Christmas TV special to relaunch his career.

Cloud Nine is a play by Caryl Churchill who is arguably the most successful and best-known socialist-feminist playwright to have emerged from Second Wave feminism. Premiering in 1979, it deals with almost every contentious, debated or regretted issue in human existence, and thus, is complex and challenging for any company to perform. Set in two acts, the first is set in colonial times. The second act is firmly in 1980. It is about relationships between women and men, men and men, women and women.

Producer John Frost worked on the first Australian production of Grease in 1972 tearing tickets for patrons – it was a darker version of what is staged now and surprisingly closed with a few months.

Years later he had his arm twisted to bring Grease back, but with Guy Pearce in the lead role of Danny it became a hit, spurring him to revive it no fewer than eight times.