Month: March 2021

   FROZEN, the Touring version of the Broadway Musical opened in Sydney at the Capitol Theatre just after the opening of PIPPIN at the Lyric Theatre. These two big musicals showing the way to the re-opening of the BIG theatres in the time of the Covid 19 Pandemic. Heroic and Hopeful. The audience I sat with were an excited collection of fans of the Musical primed for the show, armed with their knowledge of the two FROZEN films, I supposed, for, whenever a song came or an interaction between characters, there was a sensation of emotional identification that had…

YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL, is a new Australian work by Sam O’Sullivan, Directed by Samantha Young. This play follows up from Mr O’Sullivan’s play THE BLOCK UNIVERSE. Both these plays have proved to be very interesting experiences and are exciting as Mr O’Sullivan’s playwriting skills have grown promisingly from exposure to exposure. YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL, introduces us to a couple Dan (Akira Ashraf) and Ellie (Kate Skinner), who have set up an apartment. Ellie has found a client who has her working digitally on-line, which gathers a demand with increasing pressure as the play moves through time. Dan, in the meantime,…

WILD THINGS, is a new Australian play by veteran writer Suzanne Hawley. It is a story of four female friends in their sixties. They are war babies that aren’t boring old farts wearing twin-sets or pearls. Think Mick Jagger, The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Janis intruding into a time of innocence of no sex education and where the rest of the world was filtered through the lens of Empire Day and the singing of the rousing “There’ll always be an England”. Where the life choices for the working class girls at school were deemed either Domestic or Commercial – for the…

OUTDATED is a new Australian work written and directed by the Artistic Director of the Theatre, Mark Kilmurry. It is a simple set of sketches that begin with a middle aged couple meeting to date over the internet. We follow a 90-minute trajectory of the ups and downs of the relationship. It involves only two characters: Olivia, played competently and breezily by Rachel Gordon and Matt played by Yalin Ozucelik. Mr Ozucelik has a charming grasp of a pencil thin individual and is especially physically dexterous – his acrobatics are well worth enjoying. Set and Costume Design is by Simon…

Alexander Berlage, the Director of The Mel Brooks Musical, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN,has created a sterling record at the Hayes Theatre for revitalising, perhaps, even the resurrecting of Musicals that initially failed at the box office and critical response on Broadway. The musicals CRY-BABY (1990) and AMERICAN PSYCHO (2013) were given breaths of life by Mr Belage in Sydney. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, the musical appeared in 2007, based on Mr Brooks’ film also titled YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN from 1974. The musical received mixed reviews on opening on Broadway. Based on my experience of this present production at the Hayes the material that the actors have to…

PLAYING BEATIE BOW is a Young adult novel published by Ruth Park in 1980. Ruth Park died in 2010 at the age of 93. The book has had a staunch readership in its brief history and is a favourite for a few generations of young Australian readers. Both Kate Mulvany, the adapter of the novel for the theatre and the Director Kip Williams are two of those long affected readers, they declare in the program notes. I have never read the book even though I have had a long connection to most of Ruth Park’s work and so am discovering…