This show celebrated the first 45 years of the life of the Adelaide Festival Centre and the new star-studded walkway on the East-west promenade along its River Torrens side.
The most striking and enchanting element of this production is the extensive use of puppetry to bring to life the menagerie of creatures Darwin rigorously studies on his journey, these remarkable visuals and complex scenic elements work in perfect balance with the focus on character, story, and one big, history-changing idea.
To tell you the truth, I wanted the play to end before it did because I was so confused, so involved, so anxious and so pent up about what they call this “cat and mouse thriller” that I wasn’t sure where it was going.
This retelling of an old tale is a joyful cacophony of pantomime whoops and theatrical hollas. The storyline is original allowing nostalgia to simmer gently yet expectations are challenged in wonderful and fabulous ways.
Adelaide is all agog around the Festival Theatre Centre on the banks of the Torrens River because the French Festival is on.
This particular group of Adelaide women are experienced performers and their talent and quality comes through this show.
There’s two sides of every story and that's what we get here, two perspectives, two versions of the same tale, careening in out of corroboration until they collide with the truth.
In the intimacy of the Lawler Theatre, the show starts off casually, with the house lights still up and Muggleton engaging in caustic banter with her audience, some of it improvised, warming to her role as Callas. But once the character of the prima donna is well established, she calls in the first student or ‘victim’ to face her formidable tutor.