Reviews

Southern Cross Soloists are celebrating their 30th year of musical excellence and so titled this program ‘Pearls’ – for the landmark anniversary, and for the rare musical jewels they have chosen to showcase. And this display certainly sparkled! It is also Reconciliation Week, and so wonderful that this celebration of music included First Nations superstars, both from Queensland – Chris Williams (didgeridooist extraordinaire) and Nina Korbe (soprano, and recent graduate of the Queensland Conservatorium and London’s Royal Academy of Music).

The Gilbert and Sullivan Society of WA are presenting the rarely performed Utopia Limited. Performing for only the third time in WA (previous incarnations were in 1972 and 2002). This little seen production has a great deal of charm.

The Barden Party, from NZ, can take a Shakespeare play, trim it, leave out characters, do some gender bending, add Bluegrass music songs and yet, amazingly, leave the play’s emotions and drama intact.  They do all that with their interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, but there’s comedy as well.  Tragedy it remains, but their Romeo and Juliet is also enormous fun.  With their Macbeth, the intent is more serious.  Adapted and directed by Laura Irish, the gender bending isn’t arbitrary or funny – it’s focussed and delib

Jennifer Willison is a director who finds plays that extend her cast and her audience. The Revlon Girl is no exception. It is a play about coping with fear and loss resulting from an unimaginable event.

In the little coal mining village of Aberfan in Wales on 21st October 1966 at 9.15am, a 34-metre-high tip of colliery spoil slid down a hillside above the town. The wet, black slurry engulfed a primary school and a village street killing 116 children and 28 adults.