Nothing quite adds a sense of reality to a “night in the woods” like a diegetic thrum of real cicadas. At one point a chorus of kookaburras struck up, as if perfectly on cue to provide a fanfare for Titania’s entrance!
Young girls tumble across the stage, flip over and over, handle enormous numbers of hula hoops, stand on large balls, and fly, twirl and spin through the air. And this is only the overture.
Burkett is undoubtedly a master of guiding his cast through all matter of human (and otherwise) gesture, but the real magic is his ability to convey characters across his player puppets.
Boston Marriage, performing at the Darlinghurst Theatre depicts two deliciously etched bitches with one thing on their mind. It’s not the same in each case, however.
Detailing the travails of an inept handful of (very) small-time mobsters who run afoul of the real thing, Mojo gives us an entertaining vision of a 1958 London obsessed with imported Rock & Roll and American fashions, yet still profoundly British almost to the point of caricature.
Stephen Sewell’s new play, The Gates of Egypt is a clarion call to extend ourselves beyond our individual temporal concerns and act within a larger moral framework.
Bubbling with bouncy banter including every ludicrous Aussie-vernacular-cliché under our collective sunburnt brow, The Glass Boat loosely themes itself on time-travel, Christmas and a mental institution.
That Eva’s been dancing since 12 should surprise noone, since she does it with such consummate self-assuredness: while I’m gasping, in anxious anticipation of a fatal error, she’s dancing her heart and soul out.
In the care of Pinchgut Opera’s director, Erin Helyard, this music, formulaic as it indeed is in some respects, sprang off the page into an experience rich in emotions.
Blind faith and rational belief are always sparring partners in dramatic conflict and so it is here with the power play tinged with superstition and salaciousness.
Contradiction, conundrum, conflict, racism, misogyny and homophobia run through this play like a main circuit cable snaking through a moral minefield of explosive allegation.