Written by Chris Issacs, Old Love is the latest play from Perth’s theatrical super-group The Last Great Hunt. Fans of the emerging collectives work so far will not be disappointed; Old Love is full of humour, wit and captivating characters, from the sophisticated and sultry older woman Florence (Nicola Bartlett) to the younger vitriolic foot-in-mouth…
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Following the success of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot in 2013, it made sense for the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) to take on one of the great playwright’s better known plays as a follow up – Endgame – with one of Godot’s leads, Hugo Weaving, in the production’s lead role. In what must be Weaving’s…
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From the Rubble is the first work in the latest theatrical season for Perth Theatre Company. Based on the work of West Australian journalist Sophie McNeill, From The Rubble, is an unflinching and timely examination of the impact of war, conflict and extremism on innocent lives, both young and old. From The Rubble, as I…
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Over the course of his burgeoning career, Finegan Krukemeyer, still only 33, has been commissioned and written 70 works, across 5 continents and multiple languages. With many of those works designed to be watched and enjoyed by children. His latest production (this time for adults), the wonderfully and loquaciously titled Those Who Fall in Love…
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Following the recent successes of Ovo and Michael Jackson The Immortal in Australia, Montreal’s famed Cirque du Soleil returned to Sydney this week with their latest production Totem sitting under The Grand Chapiteau, some four years after it first premiered in Montreal. It arrives just in time for the company’s 30th anniversary and from the…
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Overexposed the latest work from director-performer Danielle Micich and writer Suzie Miller is a timely piece and a thought-provoking one. With our everyday lives apparently threatened by the possibility of attacks both domestic and international, security and surveillance have become media buzzwords in recent weeks and months. It was quite fitting then, that on entering…
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Falling Through Clouds is the new production from Perth theatre company – The Last Great Hunt. Personally I’d argue that that sentence alone should be enough to make you want to go and watch this work. But then of course you might not know who they are yet. If you don’t Falling Through Clouds will…
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By the time the hit musical Wicked ended its run on 26th September 2010 at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney it had brought in over $50 million in ticket sales, being seen by over half a million people, before moving on to Brisbane. By the time it ended its tour in Perth, it had been…
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Letters Home is the latest theatrical work from Joe Lui. If you’ve been to a theatre production in Perth over the last few years, it’s likely you will have seen Lui’s name and face in a programme somewhere having worked as a director, writer and designer on a number of productions, including with his own…
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With her scripts for Mabo and Brides of Christ, Australian writer Sue Smith has never shied away from controversial or important topics. In her new play Kryptonite, which premiered this week in Sydney as a co-production between the Sydney Theatre Company and the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Smith tackles the relationship between Australia…
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The Distance from Here is the latest production from Perth theatre company Endless Theatre Company. Written by American director, screenwriter and playwright Neil LaBute, the play is a dark and at times brutal look at life on the fringes of suburbia, a tale populated by disenchanted youth and their extended families. Though set in suburban…
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When you ask people if they like musicals, one either gets an enthusiastic smile accompanied by a big “YES”! or an unapologetic “NO”, as a look of disdain comes across their face. When you dig a little deeper, it comes out that it’s not so much musicals like Mary Poppins that they’re talking about –…
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White Rabbit, Red Rabbit, the final instalment in Perth Theatre Company’s 2014 season, is not your average night at the theatre. Written by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour, White Rabbit, Red Rabbit is more akin to performance art than traditional theatre. Each night a different unsuspecting performer takes up the challenge of acting out Soleimanpour’s script,…
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On Wednesday night Perth’s His Majesty’s Theatre stage was transformed into the ornate halls of the Vatican for the opening night of The Last Confession, presented here for the first time in Australia, with venerated British actor David Suchet (Poirot to so many) making his Australian stage debut as Cardinal Benelli. Set in 1978, The…
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We all have our slight addictions, many of them relatively benign like coffee. For others like the protagonists of Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography, the most recent production in Perth Theatre Company’s 2014 season, they are more extreme and not without their consequences – whether it be his addiction to hardcore pornography on the Internet…
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RabbitHead is the latest production from Little y Theatre Co and Whatshesaid. Directed by Ian Sinclair RabbitHead is a darkly absurd Australian comedy and performative response to Barbara Baynton’s gothic novel The Chosen Vessel. It’s a strange work – full of oddities and quirks, and even now, a day or so later, I’m still not…
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The paranormal has long captured the interests of writers, directors and actors alike. You can even go into bookshops and find whole shelves devoted to the genre. Werewolf Priest!: The Lamentable Ballad of Father Hank Grimby, the latest production from writer, director and producer Levon J Polinelli both continues this burgeoning genre, and successfully parodies…
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Wish is the latest production from Perth Theatre Company, and the first in its new season. Adapted by Actor and Director Humphrey Bower from the Peter Goldsworthy novel of the same name, Wish is a charming yet challenging piece of theatre, which will perhaps leave a few unsuspecting patrons unsettled and uncomfortable. Wish is the…
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Elephents, the latest brainchild from writer Jeffrey Jay Fowler, has all the hallmarks of a good soap opera; love triangles, dramatic deaths and even the odd elephant or two. It’s sort of like Neighbours or Home and Away, you know, if either were set in a dystopian world plagued by power cuts and where going…
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Isabella Rossellini steps onto the stage in front of a full house at Her Majesty’s Theatre to rousing applause. She is carrying a basket with two bunches of flowers, one of beautiful blooms and one of weed-like plants and explains how the blooms act like foreplay to the insects, which fertilise the flowers, whereas the…
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream is up there as one of Shakespeare’s most oft performed plays. There have been countless as adaptations and reinterpretations over the years, but I’d imagine there are few as wonderfully strange and eclectic as Russian director Dmitry Krymov’s interpretation A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It). As clichéd as it…
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Heroes and tyrants, Gods and Mortals, and ancient armies all clashed on stage on Sunday night. All of them brought to vivid life by one man, actor and co-writer Denis O’Hare, for the Australian premiere of the An Iliad. A captivating and engaging adaptation and reinterpretation of Homer’s Iliad by US collective Homer’s Coat, that…
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Meet Bruce. He’s a “hero” cop, turned bestselling author, turned astronaut, turned time traveller. He’s also the titular star of Tim Watts’ and Wyatt Nixon-Lloyd’s new production Bruce. Oh and in case you hadn’t noticed already he’s a giant yellow foam block. Suffice to say this is a show like none other you will see…
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‘Boy meets girl…’ – On the face of it, Trampoline is about just that – a boy (Matt) meeting a girl (Kelly) and falling in love. If only it was as simple as that. Matt is a compulsive dreamer, the lines between reality and his dreams are blurred, meaning most of his attempts to have…
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Larry Heath sits down with half of Melbourne’s World’s End Press to talk about their debut self-titled album (Out October 4th) and much more…
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Larry has a chat to the actress who has been given one of the most iconic roles from the world of murder mysteries and crime fiction, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. Judi Farr is the legendary Australian actress who’ll be bringing Miss Marple to life on stage in Sydney and Melbourne in the production A Murder…
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The Boat Goes Over The Mountain is the latest theatrical instalment in the current season at Perth’s Blue Room Theatre. Presented by Happy Dagger Theatre, and developed by and starring Andrew Hale; the production is essentially a one-man play, with accompaniment of a miscellany of instruments from Dave Richardson. It is a frantic mediation on…
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The Little Mermaid. Many of you are sitting there thinking you know the story; you might even be humming “Under the Sea” to yourself. What you may be unaware that the Disney like with many of its miscellany of movies drew inspiration from fairy tales, predominantly those written by Hans Christen Andersen. However, unlike their…
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Hedda, currently being presented at Perth’s The Blue Room Theatre, is a reinterpretation of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s classic play Hedda Gabler; originally written and produced in the 19th century. A multicultural effort of sorts, the production sees Norwegian actress and producer Marthe Snorresdotter Rovik collaborate with actor and director Renato Febratti, a graduate of…
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The classic Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead has long existed as part of the Hamlet curriculum in the later years of high school, both in Australia and around the world. For me, and many, year 11 was where I first discovered the play, Stoppard and the beauty of the absurd. It’s a…
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