Reviews

Sometimes a production is so creatively concise and fascinating in content; so invigorating in performance and so evocatively staged, it’s difficult to know where to start with a review - especially when the subject matter is so important. The inescapable fact is, it would be remiss of me not to extrapolate on the subject matter depicted in the play. 

The incredible truth being that the toxic fallout experienced in the ‘former’ asbestos mining town of Wittenoom - remains to this day, even though the mine was closed in 1966.

Tchaikovsky is well-known for his emotional Romantic music, his turbulence and melancholy, but his homage to Mozart with Variations on a Rococo Theme expresses his and his generation’s nostalgia for Mozart’s earlier world of refined elegance and restraint. 

Peeling her potatoes for her husband to make him chips and eggs when he gets home from work, Shirley Valentine fantasizes about a holiday to Greece where she will enjoy sex for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The play, written in 1986, is about a middle-aged woman in the midst of suburban drudgery with a sullen bully husband. Some aspects feel like a period piece but many of the one-liners ring true.

Shirley notes wryly that at the age of 42 all the good things in her life are in the past, but she felt like that when she was in her twenties.

From the Departure Lounge of Ansett Airways, Melbourne in the 1970s, with an overhead airport sign telling us exactly where we are at any minute, is the story of how Australia’s first female commercial airline pilot came to be. The heroine of the story and genuine Fly Girl is Deborah Lawrie, besotted with flying from an early age.