Reviews

The Narmada River is classified as the oldest river in India and the only one to flow in opposite direction to the other rivers. It is the mother of all the rivers and known to have purifying qualities personified as a divine lady - the goddess Narmada in the Hindu religion.

The Wrong Gods is written by S. Shakhidharan and co-directed with Hannah Goodwin. You may know the playwright from his previous, critically acclaimed work Counting and Cracking - an epic three-and half-hour cross-generational Sri Lankan immigration story with fifty different characters.

I purposely did not read the show description before heading to this Rising show. There is something in me that believes that a performance piece should deliver itself to the audience. Ideally the piece should land in me, the empty vessel. My feeling body should receive the work. Hopefully the show will unfold its poetry in front of me without prior knowledge.

I confess that other than seeing Jessica Mauboy in Idol and The Sapphires movie and occasionally hearing some of her songs, I knew very little about this amazing woman.

I left Her Majesty’s Theatre a new convert, immediately downloading songs and delving further into her music history. Jessica is a powerhouse! An inspiration to all to follow their dreams and their gut, this young woman positively dominated the stage and had the audience revelling in every note and story.

A love of swing and jazz brought The Crooners together and, since forming in Brisbane as a duo and adding pizzazz to the concert festival circuit, Tim McCallum and his partner in rhythm and rhyme, Tony Doevendans, have enlisted a third voice – Micky Sattin – to make their group a full-fledged trio that echoes Frank, Dean and Sammy. But this is no deja vu Rat Pack tribute act.