Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

OUTDATED is a new Australian work written and directed by the Artistic Director of the Theatre, Mark Kilmurry.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…

Oliver Schermacher remembers: Matthew Lee travelling in a car from Canberra with musician Oliver Shermacher,  when he hears for the first time Hector Berlioz’s SYMPHONIE FANTASTIQUE, at full blast – bopping in my seat and enthusiastically head-banging to Berlioz’ erratic and colorful music. Mat became intrigued when I described its deranged story and the eye-brow raising background of the piece as a love letter to a woman he had never met. Though Berlioz did stalk and woo her for seven years, finally threatening to over dose on heroin, before she, actress Harriet Smithson, capitulated and married him. (Ultimately, of course,…

MONTAGUE BASEMENT is a theatre company led by Saro Lusty-Cavallari and in the case of this new Australian play, he is the writer, director and is the Video and Sound Designer – quite a brief of responsibility. A couple Daniel (Jake Fryer) and Juliette (Lucinda Howes)  are stuck in their apartment during a COVID19  lockdown. The apartment has a comfortable look, resonating wealth and security, a warm wooden designed platform with two couches and practical room lighting, Designed by Grace Deacon, and has a colour support in the Lighting from Sophie Pekbilimli. The play is made up of many short…

The Griffin Theatre premiered WICKED SISTERS sometime in the early 2000’s and this is a revival of the work for the same company. This play was written in 2002. Alma de Groen is one of those great writers of plays. Alma de Groen was born in New Zealand but pursued a life as a playwright in Australia. Her work, contextually, came forth in the so-called era of the Second Wave Feminism. This play, unusually, has a cast of four women, who being over the age of fifty are the surviving elders of a niche university clique who were, supposedly, friends…