Reviews

This must be the coolest adaptation of Shakespeare on the planet and by the buzz created at the world premiere it’s on a trajectory to be seen in theatres around the globe.

Love, Pop and Shakespeare is the mantra of the opening number sung by the six leads around a statue of the bard decorated by lipstick kisses.

If the title puts you off, think again!  This PG rated musical was nominated for a staggering ten Tony Awards, winning three.  Urinetown ticks all the boxes of what a great musical should be.  The characters are engaging, the story is riveting, the humour infectious and the music is foot tapping. Greg Kotis came up with the idea of Urinetown while travelling in Europe as a student on a limited budget.

The Wharf Revue may be the most consistently truthful accounting of national and international politics you’re likely to encounter in Australia.  Using unsurpassed creativity and acting talents to turn top politicians’ foibles and faux pas to the advantage of the public, Jonathan Biggins, Drew Forsythe, and Phillip Scott manage to make of any untruth a new truth; of any evasion an invasion; of any half-glass a robust mirror.

Faye Bendrups’ program note says Greg Carroll’s set design could be ‘a dream or a reality… a boudoir or an insane asylum.’  Whatever it is, it’s a brightly lit space of dazzling white.  There are three lovely women of a certain age (writer and composer Faye Bendrups herself, Alison Richards, and Julie Dawson) all in 1920s white, seated at a table, and having a girls’ night out and a fine old time, drinking, laughing, reminiscing, winking at us, and mixing some sort of punch.  Lesley Gore sings You Don’t Own Me from the