Reviews

Presented by Little Match Productions, The Babushka Book Club is a fabulously funny cabaret combination of laughter and music, developed by its wickedly witty leading ladies – Alicia Cush, Judy Hainsworth and Laura Coutts – alongside director Bridget Boyle and Penny Challen, with piano and musical arrangements by Luke Volker (and Alicia Cush). This talented threesome have been performing on Brisbane’s cabaret and music scene for many years and their stage experience shows in their command of an audience.

Salvation Army gal falls for gangster.  No, not Guys & Dolls (1950, movie 1955), based on Damon Runyan stories. Elizabeth Hauptmann based her ‘book’ for Happy End, apparently, though very, very loosely, on GB Shaw’s 1905 Major Barbara. 

In the yard of a shack in Wyoming, in 2017, a year into the Trump presidency, four friends sit and talk.  The shack itself (design by Louise McCarthy) features a pattern to its peeling paint and one curtained window: it’s the Stars and Stripes.  When the light beams from within, the Cross is outlined on the door. 

Occasionally, theatre leaves me breathless and awestruck, and this Sydney Theatre Company production, adapted and directed by Kip Williams from one of Oscar Wilde’s best known 1891 works, is one such example. Quite simply, 37 year old Eryn Jean Norvill has been given the role of a lifetime and has delivered the performance of a lifetime.