Reviews

Whilst this is the inaugural Dark Impro festival, Protea has existed as a loose collective since 2020, driven principally by artistic directors Rowan Harris and Matt Wilson. Protea now runs regular Theatresports, classes and workshops as well producing long form works, working collaboratively with interstate and overseas artists.

In 2025 A Chorus Line celebrates its 50th birthday, but this far down the line the show hasn’t aged a bit. It's still the groundbreaking crown jewel of musical theatre. With a score by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Edward Kleban, and a book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante, it has as many ‘theatre standards’ in the score as Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables. It also has a handful of dance routines and combinations that, at some point, get burned into every theatre performer’s being.

One 11-year-old boy has hit another in the face with a branch, knocking out the victim’s teeth. Like civilized adults, the parents meet to try to agree on an appropriate outcome, but there’s nothing quite like a good spray of vomit to warp the thin veneer of polite society. Yasmina Reza’s glorious creation God of Carnage is all about keeping cordial while trying to repress a boiling mud geyser of emotion. That undercurrent of unspoken feeling keeps bulging out until finally it erupts to riotous effect.

Sir Tom Stoppard is one of Britain’s most famous – and prolific – theatre writers. He has written for the stage (Arcadia), screen (Shakespeare in Love, The Enigma) TV and radio. According to Britannica, Stoppard “is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation”. His plays are complex and complicated in both themes, characters and settings.