Category: Theatre
Review: Commentary Asks Who Gets The Tell The Story When Everyone Is Watching
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★★★★★ Five windowpanes divide a large blue box. Tall screens shaped like smartphones stand on either side. The stage is empty, but Nick Atkinson’s voice is already filling it, delivering the director’s commentary for his film Low. Matilda Woodroffe’s set establishes the visual grammar of Ash Flanders’ Commentary: windows, mirrors,…
Review: Cleopatra & Antony Brings New Perspectives To An Old Tragedy
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★★★★☆ Melbourne Shakespeare Company returns to fortyfivedownstairs with Cleopatra & Antony, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s historical tragedy by Sonya Suares. Serving as an abridged retelling of the original, Cleopatra & Antony explores the roles the title characters play in both the text and in history. But viewers might find it doesn’t go far enough…
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: The Jungle and The Sea Is A Sweeping Story Of Family, War & Survival
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★★★★☆ We see theatre to be transported to different worlds, to understand neglected stories, to connect with character and taste the gamut of emotion. It’s a big ask, and it’s rare that a single work can deliver on all fronts. But Belvoir St Theatre and Melbourne Theatre Company’s ambitious new…
Review: Do Not Go Gentle Refuses To Go Quietly
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★★★★☆ What does a crew of early 20th-century explorers to Antarctica have in common with a group of modern-day aged care residents? A boundless hope, an adventurous spirit, regrets, and more. They explore life’s biggest questions in Patricia Cornelius’s beautifully haunting Do Not Go Gentle, presented by Queensland Theatre Company.…
Review: Death Of A Salesman Is A Devastating Reminder Of The Cost Of Success
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★★★★☆ Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman may have premiered in 1949, but Neil Armfield’s devastating production makes it abundantly clear that Willy Loman’s struggle is far from a relic of post-war America. More than seven decades later, we are still chasing the promise of success, measuring ourselves by titles, salaries and…
Review: The Sound Inside Listens To The Stories We Tell Ourselves
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★★★★★ A woman stands beneath an illuminated streetlamp beside an empty park bench on Yale University’s campus. It is the middle of the night and she cannot sleep. Dressed in the yellows and browns of an academic, or possibly Velma from Scooby-Doo, Michelle Nightingale’s Bella Baird is alone but never…
Review: Animal Farm Finds New Bite In Orwell’s Warning
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★★★★☆ On Wednesday night, Bloomshed opened a new season of Animal Farm, based on the novella by George Orwell, at Melbourne Arts Centre’s Fairfax Studio. Presenting at first blush as a bombastic, comedic take on the literary classic, Animal Farm manages to deliver a surprisingly potent message on our current times. Bloomshed is…
Review: Second Coming Is Saving The Planet, One Laugh At A Time
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★★★★☆ La Boite Theatre and Playlab Theatre present Second Coming, a spectacular and humorous take on leaving this world for another. Set in 2065, this world premiere, directed by Ian Lawson, imagines a future where Earth is burning, and humanity’s last hope lies in an ambitious mission to save its…
Review: Reservoir Dogs Meets Shakespeare In Playful Mash Up
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★★★½ The lyrical genius of Shakespeare collides with the razor‑edged storytelling of Quentin Tarantino in The Ghostlight League’s return to William Shakespeare’s Reservoir Dogs. Written by Sydney Shakespeare Company Artistic Director Steven Hopley and directed by The Ghostlight League Artistic Director Rob Lloyd, the production delivers exactly what its title…
Review: A View From The Bridge Is A Must See At New Theatre
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★★★★★ New Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge is a powerful exploration of the fallacies of masculinity. Tragic playwright Arthur Miller is best known for the 1949 play Death of a Salesman and the 1953 play The Crucible. A View from the Bridge came out not…
Review: Gunawarra Re-Creation, 2026 Clancestry Festival
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★★★★★ “To see my culture. To hear my language. To see my traditional dance on a mainstage is beyond my wildest dreams and beyond my ancestors’ wildest dreams. Telling this story has been a gift. Weaving creation stories with narratives of today are vital in understanding who I am and…
Review: Top Silk Peels Back The Gloss On 80s Ambition
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★★★½ Top Silk, David Williamson’s 1989 play revived at Ensemble Theatre Sydney, goes full ‘80s. There’s ambition, corruption, family drama, gloss and, of course, the shoulder pads. The play captures the gilded surface and corrupt underbelly of the decade in true Williamson form. Jane (Gordon) is a legal aid solicitor…
Review: Bennelong In London Gives History A Powerful Voice
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★★★★½ Jane Harrison’s Bennelong in London, directed by Ian Michael in its world premiere at Sydney Theatre Company, is a haunting, vital piece of truth-telling. It takes history off the museum walls and asks us to feel it in our bones. In a cosy living room, actor Sebastian Anderson (Guy…
Review: Ya’Djin Spirit Women, 2026 Clancestry Festival
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★★★★★ “When you really hold up a mirror and see who we truly are, we come from this beauty, we’re a reflection of this beauty, it walks in us, it’s in us, f***! How can you be ugly when you come from that.” Aunty Chantay Link A traditional smoking ceremony…
Review: Funeral Flowers Is A Beautiful Solo Tour De Force
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★★★★★ I’ve got a riddle for you: where in Victoria can a single actor command a room so completely that an audience sits spellbound for an entire hour? The answer lies in St Kilda East at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre. The Winter season of Funeral Flowers marks my first encounter…
Review: Logan St Uncovers The Forgotten Histories Beneath Adelaide’s Streets
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★★★★★ Before Logan St begins, its audience is asked to speak. Across a floor-to-ceiling screen, Uncle Lewis O’Brien and Aunty Lynette Crocker welcome us to Kaurna Yarta. Matt Byrne’s camera moves through the landscape, capturing burbling streams and smoke curling through Country. Together, the audience declares that we have not…
Review: Uncle Vanya Is Beautifully Performed & Elegantly Staged
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★★★★☆ Since it was first performed in 1899, the endless adaptations of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya speak to its eternal themes. What does it mean to live a good life? Is there a path out of despair? How can we coexist when those we’re closest to also feel like our captors?…
Review: Steel Magnolias Returns To Melbourne In Full Bloom
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★★★★½ Picture this: Six women, one small-town beauty parlour, a series of life-changing moments unfolding over coffee and clouds of hairspray. Steel Magnolias returns to Melbourne in full bloom, with an astounding production and tremendous cast delivering a jubilant finale against the stunning backdrop of the Athenaeum Theatre’s old-world charm. Set…
Review: Bell Shakespeare’s Mackenzie Is Something Really Special
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★★★★★ Bell Shakespeare’s new production has ruthless egos, shifting rivalries, existential dread – but no, we’re not in the wilds of Scotland, on the way to Inverness. This is Hollywood, circa 2006, where the hair may be blonder, but the contest for the throne is as fierce as ever. Mackenzie…
Review: At What Cost? A Must See Triumph For Perth
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★★★★★ When it comes to Aboriginality, who gets to decide your identity? Does it come down to the colour of your skin or the mob who raised you? Or is it just ‘a feeling’? In Australian colonial history, Tasmania came as close as possible to genocide. From an estimated population…
Review: Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) Delivers Riotous Regency Chaos In Sydney
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★★★★☆ The award-winning play, Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) by Isobel McArthur, has made its Sydney debut as the second stop on its national tour. This adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic novel is told as it should be: through gossip. Directed by Simon Harvey, it follows the plot of Pride and…
Review: Don Giovanni Sees Opera Australia At Its Most Inventive
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★★★★½ A red petrol pump stands at stage left. It looks like scenery, a piece of period detail. Then you remember Chekhov: do not place a gun on stage unless somebody is going to use it. Opera Australia’s touring Don Giovanni does use the pump. By the end, it has…
Review: The Diary of Anne Frank Balances Heartbreak With Hope
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★★★★½ The Diary of Anne Frank premiered on Broadway in 1955 and won several Tony Awards, including Best Play and Best Actress. In 1956, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The original script was written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, in close collaboration with Anne’s father, Otto Frank…
Review: The Jungle and The Sea Brings A Forgotten War Into Sharp Focus
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★★★½ There are moments in The Jungle and the Sea that crack right through you, that shake you out of the comfort of your theatre seat and into something devastatingly real. S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack’s epic companion piece to Counting and Cracking, now returning to Belvoir St Theatre, is drawn from real-life…
Review: Pride & Prejudice Is Love At First Sight
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★★★★★ It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan in possession of a ticket to Queensland Theatre Company’s Pride & Prejudice will have a greatly enjoyable time. Following a sell-out season last year that unfortunately ended early because of Cyclone Alfred, Queensland Theatre Company once again ignites…
Review: August Osage County Heralds Theatre’s Next Generation
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I walked into August: Osage County at Metro Arts on Saturday night with no prior knowledge. I had seen a production by the Acting cohort at the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University before, so I knew they were good. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the storytelling I was about…
Review: Uncle Vanya, Rebooted For The Doom Scrolling Age
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★★★★★ “Sit anywhere you like. Just don’t step on the dirt.” It is the first instruction audiences receive on entering the AC Arts Main Theatre. Three islands of red earth spread across the floor before the stage. Two more sit closer to the action. Behind them, trees sway across a…
Review: The Man Who Came To Dinner Is Christmas In July With Claws
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★★★★½ Peter Goers may be one of the few Adelaide performers who could walk on stage as Sheridan Whiteside and make the audience feel the casting joke before the first barb has fully landed. Following his successful return to the stage last year in Harvey, Goers now plays the acerbic…
Review: Steel Magnolias Blossoms In Perth
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★★★★★ Steel Magnolias was first brought to life as a play by Robert Harling in 1987 in the US, inspired by the death of his sister from Type 1 diabetes. It was then turned into a movie in 1989 starring huge names like Dolly Parton and Julia Roberts, and now…
