Reviews

Chosen to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this classic first hitting Broadway, Free-Rain’s latest production A Chorus Line is bursting with enthusiasm and aching with pathos. Though it’s not by any measure perfect, it’s wonderful to see these young people’s love of performance. More importantly, they capture all the ambition, snark, disappointment, resilience, pragmatism and compromises of the characters.

William Shakespeare, the English playwright, poet and actor, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. The son of a glove maker shunned his hereditary rights. Despite his lack of formal education and much to his parents’ dismay, he pursued his thespian dreams and moved to London to tread the boards and pen his musings into one hundred and forty sonnets and thirty-seven plays. He died at the age of fifty-two. One month prior he made a will, claiming he was in ‘im perfect health & memorie, god be prayed’.

Stepping into PIP Theatre for Salad Days Collective’s The Natural Horse is like tumbling headfirst into a brilliantly bizarre daydream; one that’s equal parts absurd, funny, and unexpectedly touching. This Australian premiere of T. Adamson’s work is a great reminder of what makes independent theatre so thrilling: bold risks, inventive storytelling, and performers who throw themselves heart-first into the chaos.

THIS PLAY is a triumph of local writing.

It has been a pleasure to see Townsville-based playwright, Catherine McKernan Doris, develop and hone her skills through this play. I have seen it develop from its initial written form, workshopped through two years of Townsville’s annual TheatreiNQ Playground Writer’s Festival to finally be staged.