Category: Reviews

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Review: Pale Blue Dot – La Boite Theatre Company at the Roundhouse

Images: Dylan Evans

Brisbane’s winter theatre season is in full-swing each year come July. I often remark to fellow theatre-lovers that we’re spoiled for choice these days – halleluia! It hasn’t always been this way, of course.

Wednesday night last week and we had a world premiere of Kathryn Marquet‘s entertaining new work PALE BLUE DOT, directed by Michael Futcher. It was also the first opening night for new La Boite Artistic Director Chris Kohn and the first time we’ve had a play set in Toowoomba. (Cheer for the home town.) Continue reading “Review: Pale Blue Dot – La Boite Theatre Company at the Roundhouse”

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Review: 1984 – shake & stir theatre company at QPAC Playhouse

Images: Dylan Evans

It’s tempting to discuss the plethora of socio-cultural themes and talking points that always seem to emerge whenever George Orwell’s, 1984 is rediscovered. However, and in the spirit of sparing our Greenroom readers an exhaustive and exhausting deconstruction of the source material, I want to focus more specifically on shake & stir’s interpretation, appropriation and ultimately adaptation of the classic novel first published in 1948. Continue reading “Review: 1984 – shake & stir theatre company at QPAC Playhouse”

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Review: Cribbie – 4MBS Classic Arts – Cremorne Theatre

There’s nothing quite like the thrill of going to the theatre and hearing stories told about your own folk and your own place and in the voices and the vernacular that belong to your own sense of belonging. I’m not a Cribbie (Cribb Islander) kid from the play of the same name by Michael and Margery Forde. I’m from Sandgate – one of the lot from another of the bayside suburbs – the furthest northerly on Brisbane’s Moreton Bay.

My place Sandgate survived – although I see it’s gone all gentrified in parts. The tidal mudflats in all their gooey, fragrant glory and the protection of Moreton island meant that it would never have the glamour of the surf beaches far to its north and south. Cribb Island, though, went under the tarmac at Brisbane Airport sacrificed, because of its proximity in the name of progress. Stories of the Cribbies and their life in the old, outrageous ruin that was Jackson’s Estate remain in the Forde’s gentle love-poem/play to its memory. Continue reading “Review: Cribbie – 4MBS Classic Arts – Cremorne Theatre”

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The DokBoki Box – The New Wave Festival at Metro Arts

Hero_image_DokbokiCreating new theatre pieces can be a risky business. The enterprise can fail so badly that it leaves the impression the work was unworthy of the time and energy spent. Many a risk-taking sours in this way. Yet we know that taking risks is critical to the creation an developments of all new theatre. Whilst, arguably, the experience for the makers is a valuable one, occasionally a risk invested returns big as its reward. Creatively risky yet brilliant conceptual gems are discovered and eventually become both critical and commercial success stories. The Next Wave Festival’s The DokBoki Box, created by Park Younghee, M’ck McKeague and Nathan Stoneham is a quintessential example of how and why we need to continually innovate. Continue reading “The DokBoki Box – The New Wave Festival at Metro Arts”

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Wrecking Ball and Vinyl Viagra – the little red company at Brisbane Powerhouse

Despite having theatrical friends up the wazoo and schlepping myself to every show in town, I have never actually met Naomi Price. More’s the pity, because after first seeing (and loving) her in the fabulous and successful cabaret, Rumour Has It at the Judith Wright Centre and now in her second pop diva offering – Wrecking Ball, at the Brisbane Powerhouse – I actually believe that if the universe deigned to bring us together, we would be firm friends. Can anyone say fan crush? Not only does the girl sing like the devil himself crafted her chords, she’s funny as a loon, shakes her booty like no one’s business and knocks back punter’s wine – right out of their hands. Oh my Lord, please be my friend Naomi? Continue reading “Wrecking Ball and Vinyl Viagra – the little red company at Brisbane Powerhouse”