Reviews

The Effect showcases the finest acting you will see from four of Australia’s top actors. Not light entertainment, however, it’s rather an intelligent examination of what love is under the metaphorical microscope of drama.

Two young people are paid volunteers for the clinical trial of a new anti-depressant wonder-drug: Connie (Anna McGahan), seriously committed to the exercise after recent psychology studies and Tristan (Mark Leonard Winter), affable serial volunteer for tests of this type - he is saving toward a holiday.

Having made various solo appearances at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival over the years, Award winning singer/songwriter Ann Hampton-Callaway and her sister, Broadway star Liz Callaway, make their “sisterly debut” with this lively collaborative piece.

Always Working Artists' 3 Seeds is a collection of three short plays by Afeif Ismail, a Perth playwright originally from Sudan, written originally from Sudan. Written initially in Arabic, they have been transcreated by Vivienne Glance, for local meaning and nuance.

The three plays are seemingly unrelated, with very different performance styles and very diverse story lines, but there is a linking theme of birth and creation and perhaps the influence of Samuel Beckett.

The struggles faced by the displaced and their thwarted dreams of finding a work and a home in a place that isn’t home are not the sort of themes one expects of  a musical! But that is the background for this fast moving, emotionally charged production.

It covers the wrench of leaving home, dealing with the language and customs of another country, accepting work in low paid jobs and poor conditions, hoping for the renewal of work permits … and facing condescension and vilification by employers and fellow workers, such as the callous Anglising of their names.