Victoria Beal - Page 3

BWW Review: Music Theatre Melbourne presents Jon English's PARIS

Moira Finucane's The Rapture: Art vs Extinction fully immerses its audience into what can only be described as a hybrid form of boutique theatre. The result is fantastic, a hurly-burly experience that leaves you walking out of the theatre in pure euphoria.

Malthouse Theatre's production of Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. is an explosion of language and imagery that challenges society's gender labels and examines what it is to be a woman. It unapologetically rips away the female archetype and screams for its audience to rally behind its title.

Inspired by the ghost stories of Charles Dickens', The Haunting follows a young book dealer from London who journeys to the moors to visit a client.

As a work of contemporary musical theatre, Ordinary Days never garnered the same acclaim as comparable works created around the time. At first glance it seems obvious why - it is short, unorchestrated, Adam Gwon's score sounds like a collection of rejected numbers from Jason Robert Brown's Songs for a New World and the book concerns itself with the daily interactions of four rather ordinary people. Fortunately, first impressions can be deceiving. This production of Ordinary Days is sublime and verifies the show's central idea that the ordinary can be beautiful.

Touted as the 'shortest musical ever' 21 Chump Street is a superbly crafted 15-minute piece written by the immensely popular Lin-Manuel Miranda for a live show of acclaimed radio/television program This American Life. Based on actual events described in the television series and with 80 percent of the script taken directly from interviews and media reports, the story centres on innocuous high school student Justin who falls for an undercover police officer and is ultimately arrested for supplying her with the marijuana she requests in an attempt to impress her.

Born from a enthusiasm for disco and an appreciation for the returning popularity of the variety show, VELVET is a night of sheer entertainment. An amalgam of circus, burlesque, variety, and concert forms, the audience is taken on a disco journey that ends in a room full of dancing and unbridled joy.

Based on the 1891 German play of the same name by Frank Wedekind and winning 8 Tony Awards in 2007, Spring Awakening is one of those rare musicals to have attained something of a cult status - the kind of show that people will claim changed their lives forever.

Kin Collective's beautifully-realised production of Tim Winton's Shrine is a haunting and ethereal exploration of loss, grief and the interwoven lives of those fallen beneath the 'long shadow' of a life cut short. Director Marcel Dorny has assembled a strong cast and creative team to breathe life into Winton's dense script and the result is a memorable and moving piece of theatre replete with all of the embattled characters, magical-realism and endless references to blood and water that fans of the writer have come to expect.

Monster Media's production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest directed by Carl J. Sorheim at The Lawler at Southbank Theatre has created a chilling insight of a mental health ward in Oregon, USA during the 1960's.

Filling the National Theatre to its very brim, both on and off the stage, CLOC's production of Les Miserables is remarkable.

Fans of the classic film starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison will not be disappointed with the recreation of the 1956 stage production of My Fair Lady currently playing Melbourne at the Regent Theatre.

On opening night of Disney's Aladdin in Melbourne, the audience were standing more than they were sitting! The multi award nominated stage musical by Alan Menken (Music), Howard Ashman (co-lyricist), Tim Rice (co-lyricist), and Chad Beguelin (Book and co-lyricist); based on the Award Winning Disney film written by Ron Clements, John Musker, Ted Elliott, and Terry Rossio; is a triumph of sights and sounds.

With simply a grand piano and a pair of killer stilettos, 4'11' performer Christina Bianco from New York is a total diva...in the best way! With a voice to die for and masterful impressions that brought audiences to their feet (twice), Bianco's show is an ode to our favourite pop, jazz, and broadway divas.

Tim Finn's new musical Ladies in Black is critically acclaimed and award-winning…and it deserves it all and more. Returning to Melbourne for an encore season, this wonderful musical is based on Madeleine St John's 1993 novel, The Women in Black, and has been excellently brought to the stage by Australian screenwriter Carolyn Burns and director Simon Phillips (Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Love Never Dies).

The Play That Goes Wrong starts subtly with a member of the audience brought up on stage to lend a hand to two hopeless stage technicians, Trevor and Annie. They are setting the stage for a performance of Murder at Haversham Manor by the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society. With fireplace mantles falling down and doors that won't close (and then won't open), we are introduced to the slapstick nature of the show.

BWW caught up with acclaimed YouTube sensation, Christina Bianco as she prepares to perform her hit solo show DIVA MOMENTS at The Alex Theatre St Kilda and The Hayes Theatre in Sydney. It couldn't be harder to put into words an interview with the effervescent star as she launches into her famous impressions left right and centre but here's what she had to say:

What do you get when you put the creators of South Park and Avenue Q in a room together to write a musical? The Book of Mormon. A musical about a pair of young Mormons, off on their 2 year mission to convert the African people.

Written by New-Yorker-turned-Melburnian Kotryna Gesait, The Nursery Web holds a mirror up to the way we behave in love.

As the years go by, Cirque du Soleil set the bar higher and higher for circus around the world. Kooza is an interesting glance backwards into a more classic and traditional time of circus.