Reviews

Murder Most Funny by Tony Laumberg (Bondi Legal) takes the standard murder mystery plot, adds some comedic spice and a slight twist to produce a solid and entertaining product. The play centres on the most famous children’s band in the world, ‘The Giggles’, and adds a murder mystery, a love story, a publicist and a policeman.

Once in a lifetime a play comes along that defines a generation. Set in 1985 and first produced in 1991, Angels in America is that play. Simultaneously comic, tragic, harrowing, poetic, challenging and ultimately spiritually uplifting, it is a masterpiece of modern theatre, and Tony Kushner richly deserved his Pulitzer prize and Tony award. This exploration of life, death and discovering and owning who we truly are, apart from whom we perceive ourselves and others to be, runs a staggering 7 hours in its entirety, so we only see Part 1.

Venturing out in wind and rain, I was glad that Will and the Ghost, at 55 minutes, was the shortest of the three plays about or by William Shakespeare currently on the boards in Adelaide.

With an all-star cast and crew and Patrick White Award winning playwright Jackie Smith, you’d expect this to be impressive, and it is. The play opens to a country lounge room so buried in magazine clippings that it looks as though it’s already been flooded. In the centre sits Janet, snipping random bits of brochure, rambling about dogs and being able to hear her husband Brian arriving home. She’s clearly unhinged, although whether it’s Alzheimer’s or some other madness is hard to tell.