Category: Lucia Mastrantone

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…

Belvoir presents ATLANTIS, by Lally Katz, in the Upstairs Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. November 1 – November 26. ATLANTIS is a new Australian play by Lally Katz. It is a heady hilarious piece of a type of magic realism. I loved it. The principal character in ATLANTIS is called Lally (played by Amber McMahon). The last time I met this ‘Lally’ was in Joe’s Pub, a Cabaret venue in the Public Theatre in New York, where she was played by the real Lally (Katz) in her monologue called: STORIES I WANT TO TELL YOU IN PERSON – she had already…

Photo by Brett Boardman Griffin Theatre Company presents The World Premiere of LADIES DAY, by Alana Valentine, in the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross. 5 Feb – 26 March. So, when LADIES DAY, by Alana Valentine, concluded the other evening, at the Griffin, my guest and I discussed: “What was the play about?” Says the Director, Darren Yap: LADIES DAY is an important, honest and confronting play. It’s not only an intelligent piece about people living on the margins who don’t often get a chance  to tell their stories, but it also hits you in the gut. For me the…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents MARRIAGE BLANC by Tadeusz Rozewicz, adapted by Melissa Bubnic at Wharf 2. The Sydney Theatre Company, this Production at least, has forgotten to tell us, in their program notes, anything about the actual originator of this material, the writer, Tadeusz Rozewicz. Everybody else, BUT, not the writer. The adaptor even, BUT, not the writer. This is not an unusual event in Sydney theatre going. The writer is often forgotten in the flowering of the enterprises on our stages. Respect is not always discernible. (The director has never been neglected in the program notes, as far…

photo by Rush The Bell Shakespeare Company present THE DUCHESS OF MALFI in The Playhouse, at the Sydney Opera House. The Bell Shakespeare Company presents THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, the cast and collaborators handout and list in the actual program, announces. It is odd that those “announcements”, even the cover page of the actual program, does not register the actual writers’ names: Hugh Colman and Ailsa Piper. No mention of the writer of the original play is claimed or made in the advertising, either (although, the theatre program is an exemplar of historical research of background to the John Webster…

At Wharf 2 The SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY EDUCATION present ROMEO AND JULIET. The text has been edited to play even less than “the two hours traffic” the Chorus tells us about in the original. It has been edited for 8 actors and maybe too slimly to do justice to Shakespeare. He has however weathered centuries of this abuse, so not to blame or worry too much. On a red dirt floor with a ubiquitous, deteriorating ute and a middle height wooden tower (it was presumably, once a water tower- I’m guessing that design detail,- and not just a convenient acting…