Reviews

Who would have expected a play about shame and the sometimes tortured relationships we have with our bodies to be funny?  It so was! The audience laughed out loud during much of the play.

It features an affair between an older sexually ambiguous male, and a generationally younger transgender woman. The relationship between the two begins quickly and rapidly escalates leading to an explosion of mutual exploration. Their continued relationship is fuelled by physical desire and cutting verbal play and set alight by unresolved emotional pain.

Side by Side with Sondheim is, in theory, a simple proposition. Place a group of highly capable performers in a room with Stephen Sondheim’s songs and let the writing do its work. In practice, of course, there is nothing simple about Sondheim. His material asks for dexterity, emotional intelligence, rhythmic precision, comic nerve, and a willingness to sit inside discomfort. A Night At The Musicals’ rose to that challenge with style.

There’s something extraordinary at Sydney’s KXT On Broadway. In a 20-year-old four-hander by English playwright Duncan Macmillan, on a ‘nothing set’ (table and 2 chairs), there’s some acting that will stop your heart. Campbell Parsons plays Darryl, a troubled 15-year-old misfit, obviously bright but utterly lost in a dark, dank corner of England. Against all odds, which include the late replacement of the other main actor, Parsons is completely brilliant as the boy/monster, rushing forward with clever ideas, holding back when misguided thoughts confound him.

Steve the Queen is a sparkling, big-hearted new work that understands a simple theatrical truth: comedy lands harder when it is tethered to pain. In this production from Cosmo Creative, co-writers and co-directors Zachary Lurje and Daniel Gough bring to the stage a family story wrapped in sequins and anchored in emotional reality. This isn’t just a play about drag, though drag is central to its theatrical language and visual pleasure.