The Addams Family is an absolutely fantastic choice for a college musical; rampant in innuendo-fueled laughs, boasting a catchy yet surprisingly complex score and a fun dose of gothic aesthetic. Plus, if all else fails, it has the unique ability to lean upon audience nostalgia for its iconic source material. I was particularly excited to learn that St. Mary’s College would be tackling it in 2018, … Continue reading The Addams Family: No Normal Night Out!
Clocking in at just an hour, Liz Newell’s play, Alone Outside crafts a delicate portrait that moves too slowly and ambles too indulgently to be fully appreciated. Taking a narratorial approach to ever-shifting family dynamics and growing up rural, Newell taps into universal experiences of love, loss and compassion. It is unfortunate to see such interesting themes and topics collapse beneath a logy execution. Further, the … Continue reading Alone Outside: A Burdensome Picture of Living Rural
The latest endeavour of comic singer songwriter Lou Wall, Lou Wall’s Drag Raceis not your ordinary fringe show. It is a glitzy, spoofy, non-binary drag fringe show, and is not to be confused with the Ru Paul created cess pool of cis white men, something which so many of us have come to identify with the art of drag. This racially diverse, intersectional and cross … Continue reading Lou Wall’s Drag Race: Drag With a Difference
Così, recently performed by Queen’s College at the Union House Theatre, was inspired in the early 1970’s when university graduate Louis Nowra found himself directing a musical staged by the inmates of Melbourne’s Mount Park Asylum. Nowra wrote himself into the character of the protagonist Lewis, a young impassioned director hired to stage a play with the patients of a mental facility as part of a … Continue reading Così: Where Laughter is the Best Medicine
Just put the damn teaspoon on the plate, man! You know when you’ve got a lazy Sunday all to yourself and you decide to experiment in the kitchen with the fettucine alfredo recipe your mum gave you, and you have no idea how it will turn out? That’s what The Good Person Recipe was like, with the appropriate analogy and all that. The show had … Continue reading The Good Person Recipe: Your Ancestors Probably Didn’t Pass This One Down
Somehow, despite loving theatre like the puppy I never got, I have never seen an UMMTA show. I have missed showing after showing, year after year of their music theatre extravaganzas, but I am glad to say I finally made it. And of all the shows to see, a double bill of new works written by up and coming artists is quite the first time. … Continue reading The Factory: Seeing Double
Venus Notarberadino as Hedda Gabler flips between a weighted stillness and erratic movement. She stares at nothing, caught up in her own mind, pulling the audience in. She’s the centre of Four Letter Word’s impressive adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, which opened this Wednesday. In a new adaption by Arthur Knight and Simon Farley, Hedda is brought into the modern era, dressed in a … Continue reading Hedda Gabler: A Hedda for the Here and Now
Upon hearing this show was taking place in the Union House Theatre, which seats around three hundred and fifty people, I was worried. There’s nothing worse as an artist than performing to a half empty theatre. But as I walked into the space with a minute to spare before show time, I was delighted to see an auditorium teeming with excited audience members. This … Continue reading The Med Revue: Medley’s Burning Inferno
Melbourne Uni Law Revue’s 2018 show took my comedy tastebuds one hell of a flavourful tour. The Cake is aptly named – slices of sweet, saucy, silly deliciousness are offered to their grateful audience with flair and finesse. So many perfectly formed bits come to mind that deserve review space, but I worry I’ll let them down in my delivery. You really have to see the … Continue reading The Law Revue: Comedy? Piece of Cake
After Heathers: The Musical’s run in early August, it would not be a surprise if there was a sudden trend towards more darkly comic stories on the stage. The International House Theatre Group seems to have continued this trend with their production of The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Karolina Judd. Little Shop of Horrors is arguably the originator of a sub-genre in musicals. The … Continue reading Little Shop of Horrors: The Trend of Dark Musicals
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