Reviews

Under cloudy skies, the magnificent set of the OA’s Magic Flute seemed at home with the surrounding high rise apartments. As if on cue, the clouds started to part as the Overture commenced and thus began a fabulous event!

Billed as a world first, Opera On The Beach was an experience not to be missed and the capacity crowd of over 3,500 in beach chairs, banana lounges and sleeping bags enjoyed every minute. Sung in English, the story was easily to understand.

Mel Brooks converted his hysterical movie into a Broadway Musical and expectations were high: however this production just missed the mark.

The large cast consisted of experienced performers and those who were starting out and the gap between the standards was obvious and this performance wasn’t helped by slow scene changes (with plenty of torch light and hands etc. visible from the audience).

Tanya Goldberg has assembled a formidable cast for this production of Alana Valentine’s poignant re-telling of the traumatic stories of past inmates of The Girls Training School at Parramatta.

First staged in 2007, the play has received wide acclaim as a piece of verbatim theatre that successfully inter-weaves the heart-breaking stories of the horrors the girls suffered at the hands of corrective and medical staff, into a piece of theatre that exposes the dark and hidden horrors yet is interspersed with humour and hope.

It’s always an amazing thing for a theatre lover to find an exceptional new (to me) talent. I encountered Tim Wotherspoon during the 5 pound repertory season last year so needed no persuasion to see him play the lead in his own play. Wotherspoon is one of those actors who exudes theatre through every pore. Not conventionally a leading man, he brings an almost menacing intensity coupled with a subtextual fragility to everything he does…and his comic timing is second to none.