Reviews

Tilt 2022 (Program One)

WAAPA 3rd Year Performance Making. The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Cultural Centre, WA. Sep 7-10, 2022

Tilt is a series of short plays presented by the Graduating Class of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts’ Bachelor of Performing Arts. Featuring twelve short performance pieces, played over two programs, audiences see six pieces on one night. The first week features six highly varied, well produced plays.

The Lighthouse

An Opera by Peter Maxwell Davies. BK Opera. Directed by Kate Millett. Brunswick Mechanics Institute, 270 Sydney Road, Brunswick. 8 – 10 September, 2022.

This is a chilling story that has very ethereal elements and casts man against nature in a very dramatic way. This original opera is based on true events about three lighthouse keepers who disappeared under mysterious circumstances from a remote Scottish location. The dark tone of the story is well suited to the genre and a great way to portray the larger-than-life characters who inhabit this eerie episode. 

Senser

By Brittanie Shipway. Director & Dramaturg Miranda Middleton and Dramaturg Briony Dunn. Theatre Works. 7 – 17 September 2022

The lights go down and then, suddenly, there’s a glamorous 1930s drag queen Cabaret Performer (Adam Noviello) in the spotlight - tight blonde curls and a clinging, shimmering green dress.  She dances, she sings a naughty, bouncy Weimar- style cabaret song.  Who is she?  Where has she come from?

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

By Edward Albee. Free-Rain Theatre Company. Directed by Cate Clelland. The Hub, Canberra. 2–17 September 2022

George and Martha have been in an embittered marriage for more than twenty years.  Not content to tear strips off one another — Martha with outright aggression and George with infuriating passive aggression — they like to involve unsuspecting others in their dysfunctional relationship, in a little game called ‘Get the Guests’.


Traps

By Caryl Churchill. Directed by Laurence Strangio. La Mama HQ, 205 Faraday Street, Carlton. 7 – 18 September, 2022

Traps has been described as a play with a “messy ontology” and this makes it a challenging text to interpret or perform. Caryl Churchill plays with theatre and narrative conventions in a much more complex way than even directors such as Goddard or Lynch did with cinema. The story is not told in flashbacks or episodes but in a strange, looped continuum (also known as a mobius strip), which is eerily asserted on the stage.

My Fair Lady

By Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Free-Rain Theatre Company. Directed by Anne Somes. The Q, Queanbeyan. 30 August – 25 September 2022.

My Fair Lady — that beloved musical that has delighted several generations — is back, with its endearing story and songs such as “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly”, “I Could Have Danced All Night”, “On the Street Where You Live”, and “Get Me to the Church on Time”.

Photograph 51

By Anna Ziegler. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Directed by Anna Ledwich. 2 September – 8 October 2022

This must be the strongest production I’ve seen at the Ensemble in recent years. Never dull for a second, there is no better 90 minutes to be had in Sydney.

K–Box

By Ra Chapman. Directed by Bridget Balodis. Beckett Theatre, The Malthouse, 113 Sturt Street, Southbank. 2-18 September 2022.

K-Box is a play that has a refreshing approach to a much-neglected topic. George and Shirley's daughter, Lucy, has yet to come to terms with the complications of being Korean and having white, Anglo-Saxon adoptive parents. The cultural implications of this begin to have an impact on her psyche as she gets older so she returns to the suburban family home to take a step back from her life. The white, middle-class privileged atmosphere is wonderfully constructed in the set and in the highly accurate stereotyping of Lucy's parents.

Art

By Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton. The Street Theatre, Canberra. Directed by Shelly Higgs. 6–11 September 2022.

In sequential solo scenes, Art’s three characters — Marc, Serge, and Yvan, all old friends — introduce themselves and their erupting conflict to the audience before exposing us to shared scenes in one or another of their homes.

Silence

Karul Projects. Choreographed, written and directed by Thomas E.S Kelly. Produced by Blakdance. HOTA Sept 1st, 2022 followed by a regional tour from Sept 7th.

It’s only fitting that Silence return to HOTA, the virtual place of its birth, at a time when our “new”ish PM is finally listening to the calls to end the silence which has been crippling reconciliation for the last 250 plus years. It’s about the silence of non-response, of muted muffled arguments, and pleas that are knowingly not heard. It has potent and poignant points to make. Most of all, it’s about the need for a Treaty - for all our sakes.

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