Reviews

Elements of Freestyle

ISH Dance Collective (NL). Presented by Brisbane Festival. Brisbane Powerhouse. 24-27 September, 2025

Adding flair to an already eclectic festival program, this Dutch-based collective of ten performers portraying a fusion of urban sports and dance against a background of pre-recorded electronic music combined with a live violinist and cellist, burst onto the stage last night as the final opening-night performance of the festival.

Old Friends Sing Sundays

With Mark Trevorrow, Rupert Noffs and Bev Kennedy. At Ginger’s, Oxford Hotel, Taylor Sq. August – September, 2025

As the legendary Peter Allen wrote: “What a blast!” A sold-out show after a run of sold-out shows, Old Friends Sing Sundays is cabaret at its classic best. Totally prepared; precisely performed; and just a tiny bit naughty!

Stranger Sings! The Musical Parody

By Jonathan Hogue. Music Composition by Jonathon Hogue. Directed by Annie Macathur. Sydney premiere at Eternity Playhouse. September 23-27, 2025.

With jam-packed campy musical numbers, Stranger Sings! The Musical Parody delivers on a night of entertainment for the Netflix series lovers.

Join teens Mike, Eleven, Lucas and Dustin, and the whole Hawkins gang of 1983, as they encounter a night of adventure, thrills, pubescent angst, poor parenting, convoluted love triangles, cheap effects and dancing monsters.

Calendar Girls

By Tim Firth. Director: Nicole Smith. Henry Lawson Theatre, Werrington, NSW. 19 September to October 3, 2025

It’s plucky women who accept roles in Calendar Girls – and a sensitive, well-organised, director who guides them. Between actors and director there has to be implicit trust, confidence and total conviction. Those three things have shone through in every production I have seen of this inspirational play. Henry Lawson Theatre’s production is no exception.

The Story of the Oars

By Nigel Featherstone. Music by Jay Anderson. Directed by Shelley Higgs. World Premiere at The Street, ACT. September 19-21, 2025

Not far from here there’s a lake, long etched into white mythology for its ability to variously flood or completely vanish, which makes it a rich setting for acclaimed author Nigel Featherstone’s new play The Story of the Oars. Stopping by the lake and beguiled by its beauty, a young photography enthusiast notices his father become oddly irritable and twitchy. Meanwhile two women, old friends, realise over glasses of wine that the day is the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of three teenaged boys.

Menopause the Musical

Original Book and Lyrics by Jeanie Linders. Sam Klinger for SK Entertainment. Direction and choreography by Cameron Mitchell. State Theatre, Sydney. September 21 - October 4, 2025

More than 20 years after it first burst onto the theatre scene in Florida, on the way to millions of ticket sales world-wide, Menopause the Musical has been given a swish looking set, an experienced cast and some local Aussie jokes.

The unlikely subject for a musical, and tight demographic focus on women of a certain age, has made it a regular cash cow over the decades. In a none too subtle plug there was a brochure for women’s medicinal products on every seat.

Wired Differently

By Screech Arts and Zen Zen Zo Physical Theatre. Bille Brown Theatre. Undercover Artist Festival, Brisbane Festival. 22–26 September 2025

Brisbane’s Undercover Artist Festival – part of the wider Brisbane Festival – shows what an inclusive creative community looks like. The opening night audience for Wired Differently was packed with enthusiastic and vocal supporters. It was a great atmosphere as Brisbane’s inclusive performing arts school, Screech Arts, combined with physical theatre specialists, Zen Zen Zo to use the stage to tell the stories of eight performers who identify as neurodivergent or living with a disability.

She Threaded Dangerously

By Simon Thomson & Emma Wright. Senseless Productions. Old Fitz Theatre. 18 – 27 September, 2025

Four schoolgirls are bursting with sexual energy, anger and hormones as they tease and compete over who is going to flirt with the temporary PE teacher. 

On the intimate Old Fitz stage they strut and posture, gabbling at a teenager’s speed, as danger lurks beyond. She Threaded Dangerously is a confronting new play from Simon Thomson and Emma Wright, snappily directed by Claudia Elbourne.

Shostakovitich Ten

Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Brisbane Festival. QPAC Concert Hall. 19-20 September 2025

Two of the Russian greats were on display last night with Chief Conductor Umberto Clerici at the helm again, the concert including a performance of Prokofiev's third piano concerto with guest soloist Ukrainian born Australian Alexander Gavrylyuk at the piano along with a remarkable addition of a collage-like art movie entitled Oh To Believe in Another World designed by South African artist William Kentridge to accompany the main event, Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony.

JOB

By Max Wolf Friedlich. Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre. 13 September – 12 October 2025

A young woman holds a gun on a man.  Blackout.  And the same again, slightly different.  Blackout.  And again.  What we’d call ‘flash cuts’ in the movies.  That’s how JOB begins – establishing itself as a thriller – a hostage situation. 

Subscribe to our E-Newsletter, buy our latest print edition or find a Performing Arts book at Book Nook.