Category: Ben Gerrard

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…

Carl Sternheim was a German Playwright and Short Story writer. This play, DIE HOSE, was written by this Sternheim in 1910, during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm was an infamously unstable (neurotic? paranoid?) leader of a world power who became what some people regarded as “Prussianized’. He became immersed in the romance of the ‘look’ of the military uniform which leant him to the conception and instrumentation of a highly militarised country with a civil government of rules and regulation that made way for an ultra socially conservative way-of-living for his populace. It was he who built a…

AMERICAN PSYCHO – The Musical, is an adaptation of the ‘infamous’ novel by Bret Easton Ellis of 1991. It is a satiric observation and skewering of the American values of the 1980’s in which the (anti-) hero, Patrick Bateman, a corporate aspirant, among many other idiosyncrasies, regards Donald Trump as a figure of admiration. It is an ironic note that we in 2019, 28 years later, are engaged with ‘a media-saturated society where a narcissistic, greedy misogynist with severe status anxiety can become the leader of the free world’. Donald Trump is a prescient mentor, indeed, for the Musical’s hero…

Photo by Brett Boardman Bell Shakespeare in association with Griffin Theatre Company present THE MISANTHROPE, by Moliere. A new version by Justin Fleming. In The Playhouse, at the Sydney Opera House. 28th August – 28th September. Justin Fleming has created a new, Australian version of Moliere’s LE MISANTHROPE. Lee Lewis has Directed it. This is the fourth Translation/Adadptation of a Moliere play that we have seen from Mr Fleming: TARTUFFE or THE HYPOCRITE, THE SCHOOL FOR WIVES and THE LITERATI – and there is another one coming next year, THE MISER, with John Bell. Lee Lewis has Directed three of these works. Peter Evans,…

  Ensemble Theatre presents BUYER AND CELLAR, by Jonathan Tolins, at the Ensemble Theatre, Macdougall St. Kirribilli. 6 October – 12 November. BUYER AND CELLAR is a one man play by American Jonathan Tolins. It was inspired by the book published by Barbra Streisand: MY PASSION FOR DESIGN. Alex More is an out-of-work-actor in Los Angeles who accepts a job in the basement of a famous artist’s home, where there has been a curation of the objects of career and the wide-ranging interests of this star. Alex will take the daily care of them. He discovers that his employer is…

Hayes Theatre Co presents, YOU’RE A GOOD MAN CHARLIE BROWN, based on the comic strip “PEANUTS” by Charles M. Schultz. Book, Music and Lyrics by Clark Gesner. Additional Dialogue by Michael Mayer. Additional Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa. At the Hayes Theatre, Darlinghurst, 5 – 30 July, 2016. YOU’RE A GOOD MAN CHARLIE BROWN, is a musical based on the comic strip, “PEANUTS’ by Charles M. Schultz. I first saw the first version of this show, in 1970 at the Playbox Theatre (Phillip St ), Sydney, produced by Harry M.Miller. Then, again, in an extended and revised version, on…