Category: Reviews

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Review: Out Damn Snot – Shake and Stir at La Boite Theatre Roundhouse

Images: Dylan Evans

Let me get one thing out of the way up front. I’m not at all keen on shows where adults play kids. The sight of 20-somethings leaping around pretending to be children can be embarrassingly awful, twee, and an insult to kids who just don’t behave the way they are often portrayed on stage. I wondered how kids felt about this and thought about sending along another reviewer to get a different perspective. However, Miss 8 was not available for the opening night of Shake and Stir’s Out Damn Snot directed by Ross Balbuziente. That left me to face my misgivings. Whilst I still think there’s a missed opportunity here to use children to play children in plays for children (some company care to have a go?) there is no doubt that this hilarious, very physical, beautiful-looking show written and created by Shake and Stir’s artistic directors Ross Balbuziente, Nelle Lee and Nick Skubij is great fun for kids and their adults.

I wasn’t sure what the kids in the audience would make of the two sisters Mackenzie (Amy Ingram), Kimmy (Nelle Lee) and little brother Heath (Nick Skubij). Given that they knew the actors were grown-ups, would they buy into the game that these were kids like them? Given their own capacity to role play on the fly, I’d say the young audience were perfectly accepting of these mad adults releasing their own inner kids and mucking about cartoon-style in a magic world. Buy this and it becomes a different experience. I really did enjoy the simplicity of the actors’ child-like (not childish) observations of game-playing and one-upmanship. My favourite is the one where we both try to tell a story simultaneously; you start and I have to join in and do it with you. Know the one? Magic! Ms Lee and Ingram release their inner-child with this lovely little slick schtick. Continue reading “Review: Out Damn Snot – Shake and Stir at La Boite Theatre Roundhouse”

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Review: Bye Bye Birdie – Harvest Rain Theatre Company at Brisbane Powerhouse

Decades may come and decades may go, but tweenage girls – whether they’re swooning over Elvis, screaming for The Beatles, or weeping at the feet of One Direction – are the unchanging glue that holds together the fabric of rock ’n roll. Feel free to quote me. If you want further proof of this fact, Harvest Rain’s latest production, the all singing, all dancing, all squealing 1960’s Bye Bye Birdie, delivers it in spades.

50’s rock ‘n roll heart-throb Conrad Birdie (Danny Lazar) has been drafted into the army *gasp* – but, before he heads off to war, his manager, Albert Peterson (Callan Warner) has organized for him to bestow ‘one last kiss’ upon an average American small-town girl. Enter Kim Macafee (Lauren Heidecker), her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Macafee (Cameron Rollo and Dana Musil), her best friend and rabid Birdie fan, Ursula (Morgan Kempster), her newly ‘pinned’ boyfriend Hugo (Cameron Whitten) and the citizens of Sweet Apple, Ohio. Top it all off with a back story involving Albert’s jilted Spanish secretary, Rose (Casey McCollow) and his domineering mother Mae (Erika Naddei) and you have the makings of a rollicking ride. Continue reading “Review: Bye Bye Birdie – Harvest Rain Theatre Company at Brisbane Powerhouse”

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Review: Children of War, La Boite indie and The Danger Ensemble in association with the Vanguard Youth Theatre

Image: Courtesy La Boite Theatre

I like the concept. Take a group of young characters pulled out of the myths surrounding the Trojan War and make them the seniors of 2012, complete with impending formal. Writer Chris Beckey and director/designer Steven Mitchell Wright have offered up a media-infused collision of old and new that seeks to highlight that it’s all just a little bit of history repeating itself when it comes to growing up in a war zone. The Danger Ensemble collaborated with the Vanguard Youth Theatre to develop and perform the work, and the cast of eight young actors grab the show with both hands (and at times their bared teeth) and run with it. Continue reading “Review: Children of War, La Boite indie and The Danger Ensemble in association with the Vanguard Youth Theatre”

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Review: Some Dumb Play – Metro Arts Allies

I still recall my first Choose Your Own Adventure book. Remember those? You read a chapter and then you’re faced with a choice – do the characters take the river or head through the dunes? Stick the knife in, or show mercy? Drink the potion or storm the castle? Ok, Head to page 26. It was GREAT fun, especially for a child, who is never the boss of anything – not so much the hobby for the compulsively indecisive, but a little bit of a thrill.

Stepping into the buzzing Sue Benner Theatre to take in the digitally experimental Some Dumb Play, that familiar feeling of spine tingling excitement began to brew. For the folks at home, this is how it works: You take along your smart phone; find your wifi settings and connect to ‘some dumb play’; open your browser and type www.somedumbplay.com, and your voting screen pops up.

To get in a bit of practice before the curtain goes up, you can vote for the pre-show music – the punters loved this. I could hear husbands and wives trashing each other’s choice and mates cheering their approval as their song was played. My girlfriend and I had an altercation over whether it was a moral duty to vote against the Backstreet Boys. It certainly got the party started. Continue reading “Review: Some Dumb Play – Metro Arts Allies”

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Review: Performance Anxiety – Brian Lucas at Turbine Studio Brisbane Powerhouse

Image: Michael Hills

I love that moment an audience shares when they are in the presence of a truly committed performer. It’s a comfortable acceptance, a feeling of safety despite the fact that what you are seeing may be totally unhinged, or bordering on absurd. This was the vibe enjoyed at the opening night of Performance Anxiety, a one-man show that went up at the Brisbane Powerhouse this week.

The Turbine Studio has been transformed by designers Kieran Swann (set) and Andrew Meadows (lighting) into an uber-cool, in-the-round cabaret den, with bare hanging bulbs, festive Christmas lights and rows upon rows of shiny wine glasses propping up a slick barman.

Centre stage is Brian Lucas – writer, performer and all-round visionary. He is the creator of Performance Anxiety,  a 90 minute foray into the behind the scenes psyche of a performer, juxtaposed with glimpses into the anxiety-ridden lives of us ordinary folk.  Continue reading “Review: Performance Anxiety – Brian Lucas at Turbine Studio Brisbane Powerhouse”