Reviews

The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race

By Melanie Tait. Constable Productions. Mountview Theatre, Macedon. 14 – 29 June 2025 – over three weekends: Fridays & Saturdays 8pm, Sundays 2pm SOLD OUT. Extra shows: 19 June 8pm SOLD OUT. 22 June 5pm SOLD OUT. JUST RELEASED: 26 June 8pm.

It’s 2019 in the little town of Appleton in the Southern Highlands and the annual show is coming up.  The big event is the Potato Race.  The blokes run around the oval hefting 50 kilo bags of spuds (potatoes are the main crop in Appleton).  The girls heft 20 kilo bags.  The race committee – Bev Armstrong (Shayne Francis), President and implacable conservative, and Barb Ling (Margot Knight), Secretary, sweetly reasonable, the peacemaker – have things well in hand.  But hometown girl Penny (Sharmi Page) has just come back to be the town&rsqu

The Wrong Gods

By S. Shakhidharan. Rising Festival / Melbourne Theatre Company / Belvoir. Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio. Jun 6 – Jul 12, 2025

The Narmada River is classified as the oldest river in India and the only one to flow in opposite direction to the other rivers. It is the mother of all the rivers and known to have purifying qualities personified as a divine lady - the goddess Narmada in the Hindu religion.

The Wrong Gods is written by S. Shakhidharan and co-directed with Hannah Goodwin. You may know the playwright from his previous, critically acclaimed work Counting and Cracking - an epic three-and half-hour cross-generational Sri Lankan immigration story with fifty different characters.

Timon of Athens

By William Shakespeare. Sport for Jove Theatre Company. Seymour Centre, Sydney. June 12 – 25, 2025

Sport for Jove’s version of one of Shakespeare’s least known plays, perhaps his darkest, was a surprise hit last year when staged outdoors in Sydney’s Leura Everglades.  Happily it’s now revived, briefly, in the cavernous York Theatre. 

The Chronicles

Stephanie Lake Company. Rising Festival. Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne. Jun 12 – 15, 2025

I purposely did not read the show description before heading to this Rising show. There is something in me that believes that a performance piece should deliver itself to the audience. Ideally the piece should land in me, the empty vessel. My feeling body should receive the work. Hopefully the show will unfold its poetry in front of me without prior knowledge.

JUDY

Conceived by Alexander Andrews. Developed with Andy Freeborn. Little Triangle in association with Hayes Theatre. 11 – 15 June, 2025

“There’s a little of Judy Garland in all of us” the advertising suggests – and this bright, cleverly conceived cabaret of the songs made famous by “Miss Showbusiness Herself” proves it is so! Six talented performers accompanied by equally talented musicians Andy Freeborn, Alec Steedman and Austin Hall showcase “the magic and humour of a legend” in this 60-minute program that is totally entertaining.

Jessica Mauboy - The Story of Me: A Musical Journey Through My Career

Presented by Desert Rose. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 14 June, 2025

I confess that other than seeing Jessica Mauboy in Idol and The Sapphires movie and occasionally hearing some of her songs, I knew very little about this amazing woman.

I left Her Majesty’s Theatre a new convert, immediately downloading songs and delving further into her music history. Jessica is a powerhouse! An inspiration to all to follow their dreams and their gut, this young woman positively dominated the stage and had the audience revelling in every note and story.

The Spare Room

From the novel by Helen Garner, adapted and directed by Eamon Flack. Belvoir St Theatre. 7 June – 13 July, 2025

I haven’t read Helen Garner’s short, applauded novel The Spare Room but maybe Pedro Almodóvar did. His last film, The Room Next-door, is about the same uneasy subject: a woman with terminal cancer convincing, even manipulating, a friend to help her die.

The Crooners: Swinging & Spinning

Redland Performing Arts Centre (RPAC), Qld. 12 June 2025

A love of swing and jazz brought The Crooners together and, since forming in Brisbane as a duo and adding pizzazz to the concert festival circuit, Tim McCallum and his partner in rhythm and rhyme, Tony Doevendans, have enlisted a third voice – Micky Sattin – to make their group a full-fledged trio that echoes Frank, Dean and Sammy. But this is no deja vu Rat Pack tribute act.

Circe’s Carnival of Vice

Inspired by the infamous ‘Circe’ episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Presented by Bloomsday in Melbourne. Produced by Steve Carey, directed by Wayne Pearn. fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne. 11 -11 June 2025

Bloomsday in Melbourne is a group which, since 1994, celebrates and explores the work of James Joyce. One of the ways in which this is achieved is to stage his work in order to demystify it, make it more accessible or simply provide an avenue to engage with and enjoy his writing. Circe’s Carnival of Vice was scripted by a team of writers: Bruce Beswick, Sian Cartwright, Dan Boyle, Philip Harvey, Linda Rooney and Frances Devlin-Glass in this spirit and as part of other Bloomsday events examining Ulysses.

Heartbreak Hotel

Eleanor Bishop and Karin McCracken. EBKM. Rising Festival. The Showroom, Arts Centre Melbourne. June 10 – 22, 2025

Two performers, Karin McCracken and Eleanor Bishop, are the creative partnership behind the EBKM. Heartbreak Hotel star Karin McCracken steps out on stage as a solo performer. It is an educational performance, wrapped around a dramatic play about a couple breaking up after six years, co-starring Simon Leary and directed by Eleanor Bishop.

Subscribe to our E-Newsletter, buy our latest print edition or find a Performing Arts book at Book Nook.