Reviews

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Written & directed by Nathan Ellis. SUBJECT OBJECT. Produced in Australia for SUBJECT OBJECT by Harry Dowling@subject_object_ Melbourne Fringe Festival, Common Rooms, Trades Hall. 30 September – 12 October 2025

The stage looks as if something was interrupted.  There are two microphones on stands, each with headphones; there’s a printer, and a jumbled pile of wooden blocks.  Above the stage there’s a large screen.  There are no actors.  We, the audience, are the actors, but the text (questions and instructions) is supplied – and it begins on the big screen...

The Moon’s Awake

By Catherine McKernan Doris. Directed by Katherine Shield. Townsville Little Theatre, Denise Glasgow Performing Arts Centre, Pimlico State High School, Townsville. 1 – 5 October 2025.

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.

Trio Isimsiz

Musica Viva. Adelaide Town Hall, King William St, Adelaide. Oct 2, 2025

This is my first experience seeing Trio Isimsiz and I hope it will not be my last!

Formed in 2009 at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, in 2015 the Trio Isimsiz won 1st Prize and the Audience Prize at the Trondheim Competition, and in 2017 2nd Prize at the Haydn International Competition in Vienna. Since then, they have travelled the world and now tour Australia presenting works from two classical giants and a welcome newcomer.

We Keep Everything

Writer and Performer: Lisa Pellegrino. Director: Kate Sulan. Set Designer: Emily Barrie. Lighting Designer and Projection Co-Designer: Tomm Lydiard. Sound Designer and Projection Co-Designer: Matt Cunliffe. Music and Composition: James Mangohig. Presented by Brown’s Mart. Brown’s Mart, Darwin, 30 September–11 October 2025.

To be truly objective about the world premiere performance of Lisa Pellegrino’s journey through her family archives, I will shine the spotlight on ‘the elephant in the room’ and declare, upfront, that none of this should have worked. Television, for one, is littered with earnest ‘who do you think you are’ family secret discovery travelogues, that blend ancestry with the seemingly requisite combination of voyeurism and vaudeville.

Into the Woods.

Music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine. Galaxy, Ad Astra, Brisbane. 24 September–18 October 2025

Broadway comes to Brisbane as Ad Astra opens its new proscenium space, Galaxy, with Sondheim’s Into the Woods. A top-notch cast directed by Tim Hill (Merrily We Roll Along, Mamma Mia!, Rent) with musical direction by Ben Murray (A Very Naughty Christmas) and a wonderful on-stage band mean that this show is a hit from start to finish! Sondheim’s mash-up of fairytales is a complex ode to surviving childhood and questing through life’s challenges.

Tomas Clifford Got Stood Up

By Tomas Clifford. Trades Hall. Melbourne Fringe. Oct 1 – 5, 2025

If Tomas Clifford has as much luck as he has talent, being stood up will be a thing of the past. 

I’m thinking of our other favourite gay cousin, the superbly talented Stephen Sondheim who, on top of his talent, also had the extraordinary good luck to go to summer camp where Tom Lehrer was a counsellor and have, as his best friend’s dad, Oscar Hammerstein, who gave him more training in musical theatre than most composers get in a lifetime. 

The Val Machin Opera Scenes 2025

Griffith University. Queensland Conservatorium, Brisbane. 25-26 September, 2025

The Conservatorium’s popular opera showcase once again highlighted the skill and promise of its student performers, this time with an ambitious pairing: a theatrical re-imagining of Mendelssohn’s Elijah alongside the Act II, First Tableau from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. Each work, drawn from very different traditions, offered students the chance to grapple with demanding music and complex staging, and the results were both successful and engaging.

Hansard

By Simon Woods. Directed by Barry Park. Garrick Theatre, Guildford, WA. Sep 25 – Oct 11, 2025

Hansard is set in 1988, at the end of the week in which Margaret Thatcher's government passed Section 28 of the local government act, which prohibited the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities. The story takes place in the home of conservative member of parliament Robin and his more left-wing wife Diana. The title is based on the name given to parliamentary records.

Madagascar – A Musical Adventure JR.

Adapted from the DreamWorks animated film. Book by Kevin Del Aguila. Music and lyrics George Noriega and Joel Someillan. Fantasia Showstoppers. Director: Jake Elston. Richmond School of Arts, NSW. 26 Sept – 4 Oct, 2025

Thirty-two young performers feature in this adaptation of the DreamWorks animated movie Madagascar. Some become animals escaping from a zoo in New York to find “the wild”. Four are penguins setting out for Antarctica! Others begin as zookeepers or visitors at the zoo, and a little later become lemurs and cat-like carnivorous foosas on the island of Madagascar.

16 Lovers Lane

Written by The Go Betweens. Presented by QPAC. Concert Hall. 26 Sep 2025

There is a particular alchemy that happens when music steeped in memory is reanimated on stage: it becomes not only a performance but a living archive of emotion, culture, and place. 16 Lovers Lane at QPAC was exactly that; a warm, unpretentious, and deeply moving celebration of The Go-Betweens’ enduring legacy.

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