MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA THEATER REVIEWS

Gale Edwards' Production of Chess is without a doubt one of the best shows of the year and has to be one of the greatest of the show since its West End opening in 1986. ...

Let's not beat around the bush, Rhonda Burchmore is a sultry sizzling smouldering smoking hot siren. From start to finish she filled the show with a combination of presence and flesh, matched with a voice that transports you back to the time of the smokey jazz clubs of LA. ...

David Hare's The Blue Room is a study of sexual desire through the interconnecting web of life. Two actors play over ten characters all of whom share sexual experience both proximately and or indirectly. It is an accurate snapshot of sexual connection by Hare and a fascinating insight into the pred...

Over the past 3 weeks the Melbourne Cabaret Festival has been entertaining audiences. I was fortunate enough to see two great cabarets along the way!...

Back in the 1980's I harboured a small ice dancing obsession. I was captivated, as many were at the time by those innovators of the art, Torvill and Dean. Their combination of grace and athleticism defined ice dancing for me - an art form that could be joyful, moving, romantic and gasp-inducing spec...

Having never seen The Producers, but having heard so much about it, I was genuinely excited to see a performance of this show on a stage. The lasting impression that I took from The Production Company's version is that Mel Brooks is one very funny man who's writing stands alone in the musical comedy...

As the world's most acclaimed Barbra Streisand impersonator, Steven Brinberg is so SIMPLY BARBRA that the star once sent him in her place when she couldn't attend a party. And tonight I could hear why....

If cabaret holds up a mirror, it is the fun house kind. Certain features are made larger than life, but there is still a truth to be seen in the distorted reflection. So it is with the exaggerated characters encountered in MISFIT and CABARET WHORE, the Luckiest Productions double-bill presented at C...

Finucane & Smith's GLORY BOX is the latest incarnation of The Burlesque Hour, the Australian cabaret that has gone on to redefine - defy even - the genre around the world....

It is so hard to know what to make of last nights world premiere of Yusef/Cat Stevens musical Moonshadow. I would like to talk to you about the story but unfortunately there is no delineated plot to speak of. I would like to tell you what it's about, but at interval I was unsure, by it's conclusion ...

A polite smattering of applause rang around The Regent Theatre at the conclusion of last nights opening of Annie. Then came a hesitant standing ovation almost out of forced habit. For this production of Annie, filled with a cast of the highest order, was performed with a great deal of precision and ...

A rousing standing ovation met the cast of Mary Poppins at the conclusion of their opening night in Perth on Saturday night. And They had deserve it. The show is filled with magic and joy but most importantly it comes with heart. This quality is not achievable without quality performances. British a...

On January 26 1974 the first taped session of a group of dancers was recorded at the Nickolaus Exercise Centre in New York. It delved into the lives of professional artists, their hopes, dreams and sacrifices and would go on to form the nucleus of one of the longest running shows in Broadway histor...

Walking into the Forum Theatre last night was like walking into the latest, funkiest nightclub and then taking a very legal dose of the world class Australian Tom Tom Crew. This all male troupe can seemingly do anything they put their mind to. One moment these boys are acrobatically flying through ...

Theatre is designed to educate and The New York Theater Workshop's production of Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen's Aftermath is a lesson that forces us to learn. This is the principal feature of a show that is, by the very nature of its style, repetitive. Don't get me wrong I left the Malthouse Theatr...

Directed by Jay James-Moody and with musical direction by Mark Chamberlain, LadyNerd is Keira Daley's cabaret tribute to some of history's greatest and most pioneering minds, from Marie Curie to Amelia Earhart, via lesser known lady nerds including the woman who invented Liquid Paper: Bette Nesmith ...

Hold The Pickle, a one woman autobiographical journey through Rachel Berger's fascinating upbringing, can be summed up simply in one word...Real. Everything about Berger's performance is real, and it should be, with Berger traversing between the three central characters in her life, her Mother, Fath...

Agatha Christie's THE MOUSETRAP, playing Adelaide's Arts Theatre from 1 - 17 September....

Energetic, fun-loving, and dynamic, HAIRSPRAY is still delighting audiences at the Lyric Theatre, Star City in Sydney, as this reviewer saw while attending the show on Wednesday, 27 July. ...

You forget just how good the Golden Age of Musical Theatre is when you are saturated by contemporary shows in today's evolving theatre world. Tonight, however, The Production Company's revival of Cole Porter's Anything Goes reminds us of how the foundations of the modern musical were formed and just...

Melbourne's Musical Theatre community came together at The BMW Edge on Monday night in a celebration of togetherness for a wonderful cause. Thousands were raised for Oz Showbiz Cares/Equity Fights Aids. Hosted by the highly entertaining Leah Howard and Brent Hill, the programme featured performers f...

Turns Starring Nancye Hayes and Reg Livermore at the Arts Centre Melbourne...

The Australian Premiere of David Stevens' play The Sum of Us opened in Melbourne this week. It will be followed by an Australian Tour throughout the rest of the year....

The Adelaide Cabaret Festival brings a vast variety of entertainment to South Australia. For proof, just look beyond the main stages in the 2,000-seat Festival Theatre and the 600+ Dunstan Playhouse, the most traditional performing spaces in the Festival Centre....

A lack of enthusiasm embodied me as I entered the Regent Theater on Saturday night for the Australian opening of Love Never Dies, the sequel to Andrew LLoyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. Having seen the show twice at the Adelphi Theater in London I had a fair idea of what I was in for and quite...