Theatre Reviews Sydney

★★★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…

★★★★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…

★★★★☆ 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…

★★★★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…

★★★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,…

★★★★½ What do we do when confronted with something that threatens our worldview? Do we double down on our convictions based on a refusal to entertain uncertainty or a fear of change? What if our suspicions are aroused, but for…

★★★★☆ Mary Rachel Brown’s 2010 play The Dapto Chaser makes its Ensemble Theatre debut at a time when the greyhound industry is shrinking under the weight of past indiscretions (to put it mildly) and a vanishing working class. It’s a play that…

★★★★☆ The Day of the Triffids was originally written as a novel by John Wyndham in 1951. Today, adapted by award-winning director J. James-Moody, it takes the form of a play at New Theatre in Sydney. The post-apocalyptic tale is…

★★★☆☆ First, Do No Harm is an original play by AACTA-nominated and award-winning playwright Grace Malouf. It is one of three plays produced by NIDA in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre (and Talia M-K presents) as part of the NIDA KXT…

★★★★ What does one do when they are in their fifties and possibly (most definitely) going through an identity crisis? Find a roommate who is also in their fifties and possibly (most definitely) going through an identity crisis. The Australian…

★★★★★ Bell Shakespeare’s Mackenzie is an exemplar of not only adaptation, but also theatre. The new play, created by Yve Blake, brings Macbeth to the early 2000s. This sees the titular role reimagined as a Hannah Montana-inspired child star. Logie award-winning…

★★★½ Originally performed on the Belvoir stage with a stellar cast, Michael Gow’s Toy Symphony won multiple Sydney Theatre awards. Twenty years later, it returns to the locale that inspired it, the Sutherland Shire, headlining celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the former…

★★★★☆ Having recently swapped England for Sydney myself, I found an unexpected taste of home in Dollhouse Collective’s production of Simon Longman’s Milked. On now at the Old Fitz Theatre, rural Herefordshire is brought to life in this powerful and…

★★★☆☆ Created by Jye Bryant, Here & Queer is a collection of six plays, running for a limited season at Flight Path Theatre, that jab at issues plaguing the queer community.  The short plays were written by Bryant with the…

★★★★★ “Darling, I’m furious, that’s why I’m here.” I left the theatre with this line running in loops in my mind. Thinking of the hurdles, the obstacles, and the pressure women face in male-dominated industries, and yet, we still succeed.…

★★★★★ Alfred Kouris and Harry Stacey Bake A Cake does exactly what it says on the tin. Alfred and Harry WILL bake a cake, you WILL get to eat some and you WILL have one of the funniest nights, maybe…

★★★☆☆ On an unseasonably warm, wet, almost-winter’s night, we are appropriately at New Theatre’s production of writer Bess Wohl’s much-performed play Continuity. Directed with verve by Sahn Millington, it’s light and frothy and funny but with a sober message. Unlike the…

A second act, 45 years later. Edward Albee’s first play, The Zoo Story, featured two strangers, Peter and Jerry, in a one-act story set in 1959. In 2004, the American playwright came back with At Home At The Zoo, which…

★★★★★ Happy Feraren’s Savior, now in its world premiere at Griffin Theatre, presented in association with Belvoir St Theatre, is a deliciously sharp, fiercely intelligent comedy. Intoxicating, fast-moving, the show is full of unique, clever theatrical devices that keep you leaning…

★★★★★ Louise Fox’s adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds, now playing at Belvoir St Theatre, is a thrillingly vivid experience that whacks awake the senses. From the moment the lights go down, the theatre feels under attack. Ominous and eerie from the…

★★★½ There’s true power in dance. Its abandonment, its liberation. It brings us down to our primal senses and reminds us of the brief candle that is life. Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa, directed by Isabella Milkovitsch at Sydney’s New…

★★★★★ 84 Charing Cross Road charts the true story of the friendship between American writer, Helene Hanff, and the chief book buyer of British antique bookshop Marks & Co., Frank Doel. Presented by Ensemble Theatre, it’s a love letter to books, as…

★★★★☆ Can two hurt people heal each other? It’s a question with no clear answer, but Gruesome Playground Injuries, presented by new Sydney indie theatre company Unorthodox Productions, doesn’t shy from these complexities.  Gruesome Playground Injuries was written in 2012…

★★★½ How long is a life? Roughly three billion seconds, give or take. Sitting inside the intimate traverse stage of KXT Kings Cross Theatre, 3 Billion Seconds feels like a pressure cooker of love, panic and moral calculus. This play…

★★★★½ After a 5-star debut with Dear Elena Sergeevna last year, Last Waltz Productions returns to the Old Fitz with Chekhov’s masterpiece, Three Sisters.  The play follows Olga, Masha, and Irina, all stuck in a provincial town and yearning to return to Moscow,…

★★★★★ Is it possible to reduce an epic poem of warring gods and men to 100 minutes yet still manifest a universe of soul-rendering destruction that, 3000 years later, is accessible and meaningful to us? This stunning Sydney Theatre Company…

★★★★½ What does it cost to be understood? That’s the driving question behind Outhouse Theatre Co’s production of English, presented with Seymour Centre in Sydney. And as is often the case in a play about learning language, it is the silences,…

★★★★☆ Anticipation was building. Miranda Otto’s soulful eyes had been staring at me from every bus stop and light rail ad all week. It sells itself. Sydney Theatre Company at the Sydney Opera House. And with STC’s season already off…

★★★★½ The name alone has your head spinning with curiosity and perhaps slight trepidation of the journey you’re about to take. Now playing at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead conjures a visceral sense of…

★★★★½ A Transgender Woman on the Internet, Crying, a world premiere musical from Green Door Theatre Company, isn’t perfect, but it teaches us that it shouldn’t have to be. Following acclaimed concert presentations at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and the…