
On face value, it is reasonably engaging and enjoyable, but the show is undeniably shallow. It lacks the most important qualities of a musical, and as such, falls short of audience expectation.

This year Leung has taken on another burning ambition; to be a private detective! In what he describes as a journey of “hardcore whimsy” he leads us on an intensely personal trip to achieve this career ambition.

Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography is astonishingly good. This is some of the best theatre I’ve seen in 2014. It is excruciatingly accurate, brilliantly pointed in its portrayal of insecurity and addiction. I was utterly transfixed.

All in all, The Empire Strips Back is a tremendously fun show that had a large, almost full house extremely energised and engaged.

In the wake of the success of open-air opera performances in Sydney Harbour, Opera Australia's energetic and imaginative artistic director Lyndon Terracini had the idea of putting on an opera on one of Australia’s glorious expanses of coastal sand.

An amazing mixed bunch of people had rocked up to the Art Gallery to welcome the former diva and front woman of Killing Heidi and The Verses – Ella Hooper.

Director Matthew Lutton has put his experience of directing opera to use, throwing out White’s elaborate stage directions and unleashing the drama by focussing on the archetypes of human nature, their dramatic confrontations, and the elemental forces of nature.