Author: Regan Baker
Review: The Gospel According To Paul Has Plenty To Preach About
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★★★½ There’s a very specific problem with reviewing a show about Paul Keating when you were just a kid when the man left office. You understand enough to know why everyone’s laughing, but every now and then a joke sails straight over your head and lands somewhere around 1993. That…
Review: In Pour Taste 2026 Wynnum Fringe
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★★★★★ Wine tasting is already a fairly optimistic activity. You sit down, someone pours you a splash of something expensive-looking. Suddenly everyone in the room starts pretending they know what “mouthfeel” means. We swirl, we sniff, we nod thoughtfully. We say things like “stone fruit” and “minerality” despite mostly thinking,…
Review: Bradley McCaw The Music Of Billy Joel 2026 Wynnum Fringe
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★★★★½ The music of Billy Joel has a funny way of making you feel like you’ve lived several lives you absolutely haven’t. Suddenly you’re heartbroken in New York, drunk in an Italian restaurant, yelling about history, or convinced you could play piano in a smoky bar despite having the musical…
Review: Adults Only Magic Show 2026 Wynnum Fringe
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★★★½ About fifteen minutes into the opening night of the Adults Only Magic Show, a man named David was holding a sex doll like a wounded lover, shortly followed by Justin Williams staring lovingly into his soul with the intensity of a man trying to reverse-mortgage his dignity. Somewhere nearby,…
Review: Highway To Hell 2026 Wynnum Fringe
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★★★★½ There are festival openings, and then there are festival openings that make you wonder whether the roof of the Augathella Spiegeltent has its own insurance policy. Highway to Hell: The Rock ‘N’ Roll Circus, which opened the 7th annual Wynnum Fringe Festival last night, belongs firmly in the second…
Review: Meet Me At Intermission, A New Bar By Strut & Fret
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Intermission is exactly the kind of bar Brisbane’s theatre scene has been waiting for. Sitting right out the front of The West End Electric in Brisbane’s ever-colourful West End, the brand-new venue from Strut & Fret doesn’t just feel like a handy spot for a pre-show drink. It feels like…
Review: Beetlejuice The Musical Possesses Brisbane With Wicked Delight
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★★★★★ Beetlejuice the Musical has officially possessed QPAC’s Lyric Theatre, and Brisbane seems more than happy to hand over the keys to the afterlife. I love an opening night. There is something about the energy in the room that makes everything feel tenfold. The audience is either dressed to the…
Review: Sting Anchors The Last Ship Through A Powerful Voyage
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In only its second voyage, QPAC’s new Glasshouse Theatre has found its sea legs in Sting’s epic The Last Ship. There are some shows where you walk out talking about the performances, some where you talk about the music, and some where you spend half the interval staring at the…
Review: Messa da Requiem Opens On A Grand New Era
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★★★★☆ There are worse ways to christen a brand new theatre than with a production featuring a full ballet company, a live orchestra, more than a hundred choristers and enough emotional weight to flatten a room. Opening QPAC’s new Glasshouse Theatre, Queensland Ballet’s Messa da Requiem is a clear declaration…
Review: La Clique Lets Loose With Popcorn, Puppets & Complete Chaos
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★★★★☆ To say I’ve seen a lot of circus cabaret lately is an understatement. So much so that I can usually feel where a show is heading within the first ten minutes. Not because they’re all the same, but because the bones of it tend to be. A bit of…
Review: Your Song Finds The Heart Inside Elton John’s Greatest Hits
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★★★★½ Elton John is one of those artists almost everyone has a story about. Maybe it’s a wedding song. Maybe it’s a funeral song. Maybe it’s something your parents played to death in the car, or a track that still punches you in the chest because of who it reminds…
Review: MARVELous Brings Cheeky Superhero Chaos To Brisbane
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For a show like MARVELous: A Risqué Parody, the title really does most of the heavy lifting in that you know exactly what you are walking into. In no way is this subtle theatre. And honestly? Thank God for that. It’s superheroes and sex jokes thrown into a latex-clad bender…
Review: & Juliet Brings Pop Power & Big Heart To The Empire
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★★★★½ I’m not exactly a regular at The Empire in Toowoomba, but when & Juliet comes calling, common sense really does go out the window. For a show I’ve already seen in London’s West End, Sydney and Melbourne, there was no chance I was going to let it pop up within ninety…
Review: Torch The Place Finds Heart In The Chaos Of Family Life
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★★★★½ Let’s begin with a confession: I have a $5 Treasure Island Casino chip in my bedside drawer. It’s been there for 12 years, ever since a trip with one of my best mates. I have no real reason to keep it, especially since the casino changed over their chips,…
Review: Antigone Reminds Us Why It Has Survived 2,500 Years
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★★★½ La Boite kicking off the first show of its second century with Antigone is certainly a bold way to start the 2026 season. For a story that’s pushing close to 2,500 years old, it has a funny way of never really feeling outdated. At its core, it’s the story…
Review: The Great Gatsby Reawakens With Champagne, Class & Confidence
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Queensland Theatre Company and Shake & Stir Theatre Co finally joining forces for The Great Gatsby feels a bit like pairing really good cheese with a seriously great wine. On paper, it makes perfect sense, but the best combinations take time. In this case, about twenty years. Gatsby is their first…
Review: Australian Theatres Unveiled By Cameron Grant
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Cameron Grant’s Australian Theatres Unveiled photography exhibition is a striking reminder that some of the most dramatic parts of theatre happen before you ever walk through the doors. He’s taken the places we usually rush through on the way to our seats and made them the main event. Hosted at…
Review: A Very Naughty Christmas Goes Harder & Filthier Than Ever
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Some Christmas shows sneak up on you. Others announce themselves loudly, swear a lot, and grab you by the tinsel the moment you walk in. A Very Naughty Christmas very much belongs in the second category. This is my fifth year seeing Woodward Productions’ festive filth-fest, and I can safely say this…
Review: Where Death & Co Goes, The Party Follows
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Tucked beneath the historic Regatta Hotel, the newly opened Death & Co feels like a complete reinvention of a space many Brisbane locals once knew well. The former Walrus Club, a haunt I frequented far too often in my younger days, has been stripped back and rebuilt into something purposeful,…
Review: Christmas Actually Is A Joyous, Festive Singalong
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Christmas in Brisbane has its familiar markers. The lighting of the King George Square Christmas Tree, the unbearable humidity, and more NSW number plates driving up the Gold Coast Highway. And every year, without fail, The Little Red Co rolls out Christmas Actually, this year, at the Brisbane Powerhouse. At…
Review: Cirque Du Sleigh At Wynnum Wonderland
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I knew I wasn’t in for a standard Christmas show the second I walked up to the Augathella Spiegeltent. It has that slightly worn-in charm that immediately tells you something odd or brilliant is about to happen. Even with that in mind, Cirque Du Sleigh still caught me off guard. This is…
Review: Queensland Theatre’s A Few Good Men Is A Triumph
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Let’s begin with a confession. I’ve never seen A Few Good Men. I know. A film graduate who has managed to dodge one of the most quoted courtroom dramas on the planet. In my defence, I’m not alone – because neither had a lot of the younger cast! And it’s not…
Review: Bubble Show For Adults Only Brings Big Laughs To Brisbane
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There’s something inherently joyful about watching a grown man make art out of bubbles. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of backyard bubble wands or maybe it’s just the sheer weirdness of seeing them elevated to theatre, but Bubble Show for Adults Only at The West End Electric is one of those experiences that…
Review: Shirley Valentine Charms Brisbane With A Toast To Second Chances
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Walking into Shirley Valentine on opening night at the Twelfth Night Theatre, I honestly had no idea what I was in for! I knew it was an older play, I knew it was awarded, and I knew it was (loosely) about a woman talking to a wall. But that was…
Review: Rob Beckett Giraffe 2025 Australian Tour
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On the final stop of his Australian tour, Rob Beckett had the crowd on side before he’d even reached the microphone. It was an impressive feat for the UK’s sixth-richest comedian, especially considering half the audience were still wondering why the show was called Giraffe and not Teeth. While introductions…
Review: Chatter (NYC) 2025 Brisbane Festival
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In all my years of passionately loving circus, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a clown as exposed as what I experienced in Spencer Novich’s Chatter at The West End Electric. And I mean that in every sense of the word. Exposed in mind and soul. Exposed in baring his nerves, his…
Review: LASSÙ Lights Up The Stage With Cosmic Cabaret Magic
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From the second the lights hit the canvas, LASSÙ announces itself as something different. Ashton Legacy Productions doesn’t just roll out another circus cabaret; they detonate one under the big top at Victoria Park. Featuring a dynamite cast who don’t know the meaning of the word impossible, LASSÙ oozes grit, fire, and out-of-this-world circus acts.…
Review: MJ The Musical Brings Pure Pop Adrenaline To Melbourne
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Some artists are so big they stop being people and become myths. Michael Jackson was one of them. MJ The Musical, now moonwalking its way across the stage at Her Majesty’s Theatre Melbourne, doesn’t try to unpack the whole myth, though. Rather than dwelling on the controversies that followed Jackson later…
Review: The Lovers Mixes Bard & Bangers With Sparkling Style
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There’s a particular thrill when a show strides confidently into the theatre, grabs Shakespeare by the collar, and says: we’re doing this our way. That’s the energy that Laura Murphy’s The Lovers unleashes at QPAC. It’s a reclamation, not just a reimagination, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here, the women wield the power, the…
Review: The Book Of Mormon Spreads The Good Word
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Strike the church bells! The Mormons are back! Last night, Sydney’s Capitol Theatre was transformed into Australia’s largest and most wildly inappropriate church imaginable. Complete with jazz hands, an F-bomb (or thirty), and the campest group of Elders you’ve ever seen, The Book of Mormon is a show I will happily get…
