Reviews

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Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Festival Theatre. 14 June 2024

The Adelaide Cabaret Festival continues to surprise: who would have thought we’d witness the ABC’s Leigh Sales AM singing Chicago’s ‘Class’ with the Festival’s director, Virginia Gay? And mighty fine singing it was too, and an excellent opening to a live (and lively!) edition of the popular podcast from Sales and Annabel Crabb.

Lambs

Free Agents Youth Theatre. Goodwood Theatre and Studios, Goodwood, SA. June 13-15, 2024

The future of theatre is ensured if it is left to performers of the young artists of the Free Agents Youth Theatre! Lambs is an extremely powerful piece of theatre that is sure to move any theatregoer.

Written by Director Sean Riley in collaboration with his students, it explores the residents of a fictionalised country town named St Jude during World War I, when many boys and young men sought an adventure across the world by signing up to the Australian Imperial Forces despite being below the minimum age of enlistment.

Romeo and Juliet

By William Shakespeare. Atherton Performing Arts. Directed by Sarah Riber and Geo Toner. June 14-23, 2024

Set in the violent streets of Verona, Italy, this timeless play is brought to life predominantly by young-adult females immersed in the language of Shakespeare. And what a wonderful interpretation this version is.

Acted on a dystopian, post-apocalyptic set, with the rival families dressed in modern red and blue clothing, the action moves rapidly from scene to scene against a backdrop of clever lighting and haunting music.

The Swallows

By Sandra Fiona Long, co-created with Helen Morse, Ria Soemardjo & Helen Mountfort. Kath Papas Productions (Kath Papas & Taka Takiguchi). La Mama HQ, Carlton. 6 – 16 June 2024

Here is a tale of a woman’s (Helen Morse) relation to Nature: her childlike immersion in it – mud between her toes, skin red from icy water - her delicate, wondering observation of nature’s variety, the sunlight through the trees, the sensual feel of a breeze on her skin, her awareness of its silence filled with sounds – birds hidden and seen, the rustle of leaves, the trickle-flow of water – all as she walks and jumps from rock to rock and explores along beside Innocence Creek…  Her own little vulnerable world.  And then the story tells of her

Flo & Joan

Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Space Theatre. 12-15 June, 2024

Rosie and Nicola Dempsey are self-deprecating, self-proclaimed, singing, spinster sisters. And that’s not even the most alliterated line in the show. They sing and talk – frequently straying off-topic – and keep the packed theatre entertained with a wonderful combination of biting lyric, supreme musicality (jazz on a recorder, anyone?) and sublime harmonies.

Under the Table

By Sean Guy. Directed by Anita Bound. KADS Town Hall Theatre, Kalamunda, WA. Jun 7 - 22, 2024

KADS present their second Sean Guy play of the year - Under the Table, winner of the 2022 Northern Territory Literacy Award for Theatre. An interesting blend of Agatha Christie style mystery, absurdism, and Australian humour, it was very well received by its opening night audience.

Playing on a split stage, one side interrogation room and the other ostensibly murder victim Edward Hush’s dining room, we meet two rather unusual detectives and a collection of suspects whose stories do not seem to agree.

Faulty Towers: The Dining Experience

Interactive Theatre International. Castlereagh Boutique Hotel, Sydney. June 8, 2024, and touring.

The hotel restaurant of the old British TV hit, Faulty Towers, is perfect creation for this madcap Dining Experience, with lookalikes Basil, Sybil and Manuel serving our meals with their signature appalling service. 

After 25 years, there are now half a dozen versions of this show in hotels and theatre spaces around the world, yet with its vaudevillian carry-on,  Faulty remains a distinctly British Experience.

Nocturnal

By Brooke Leeder and Dancers. The.Studio, Subiaco Arts Centre, WA. Jun 7 -15, 2023

Nocturnal is a brand-new contemporary dance workchoreographed and presented by Brooke Leeder and Dancers. This very dark piece, obviously set at night, is dark in costuming, set and lighting - an intriguing piece with elements of secrecy, nightmares, and self-reflection.

Life in Plastic

Christie Whelan Browne. Adelaide Cabaret Festival. Banquet Room. 8 June, 2024

Christie Whelan Browne proudly announces her goal in Life in Plastic is to empower the women in the audience to love themselves, and we are with her all the way!

Her show Life in Plastic is a tribute to women, to their resilience and the sisterhood. We journey with her for an hour through her life, which has been full of joys but also full of many difficult times. The empathy from the audience was palpable.

The Ballad of Maria Marten

By Beth Flintoff. Hunters Hill Theatre Company. Director Jennifer Willison. Club Ryde. 7 - 23 June, 2024

In 1827, in a little town called Polstead in Suffolk in the UK, a girl called Maria Marten disappeared. It was not until a year later that her body was discovered under the floorboards of a barn. She had been shot, strangled and hit with a spade by William Corder, the man she loved. The same man who had abused her psychologically in a nasty form of coercive control. The “Murder in the Red Barn”, Corder’s trial and very public execution are part of Suffolk history.

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