Reviews - Melbourne Stage Review (Page 2)

Arthur Angel (Character 1) and Rebecca Howell (Character 2) in Hitherto, arms outstretched under saturated blue stage lighting

Reviews

Hitherto: God may have a dramaturg

God, death, shame, desire and the appalling inconvenience of other people. Hitherto turns the existential crisis into a gloriously funny theatrical playground, where meaning is always just within reach — until someone starts meowing.

Anna Seymour lies curled on the stage floor, one arm stretched out towards the camera, with an overturned wooden chair behind her. Soft red and blue light falls across the scene.

Reviews

Manifesto of Silences: When silence moves

Irene Holub’s Manifesto of Silences is an exhilarating reimagining of opera, where signing bodies, shifting images and vibrations beneath the seats create a work of extraordinary beauty, anguish and tenderness.

Four performers on a cluttered theatre stage. Two embrace at centre, another throws their arms into the air on a bench, and a fourth sits smiling beside a wooden chair.

Reviews

“I'm a one-off event”: Toto's Song

Emma Fawcett’s Toto’s Song is a glorious, irreverent and deeply moving portrait of a woman determined to live and die on her own terms. With magnificent performances and exceptional direction from Kate Fryer, this La Mama production is among the finest theatre of the year.

Two dancers lie closely entwined on the floor under deep blue lighting, with fragments of projected text spilling across their bodies and the stage.

Reviews

No still waters: Estuary

Ngioka Bunda-Heath’s Estuary is a beautiful, unsettling exploration of bodies, belonging, water and Country. Through recurring movement, the deep thrum of its soundscape and a landscape contracting around its dancers, the work gathers a disquieting force, while its images linger.

Emilie Bloom, wearing a blue rain poncho and surrounded by colourful bags, tumbles to the floor while holding an umbrella as Tim Sneddon reaches towards her.

Reviews

The art of losing all control: The Portrait

He likes things just so. She has other ideas. The Portrait finds glorious, somewhat cathartic physical comedy in the oh-so-recognisable rules, rituals and petty irritations of working life.

Scott Gooding as Richard Head and Mon Wing-Yun as Philanthropy Philharmonica sit bound and gagged onstage, with two ACT members standing behind them.

Reviews

A sticky little mess: Fuck Your Funding

For all its fury about governments, institutions and wealthy benefactors, Fuck Your Funding keeps turning its attention back onto the artists themselves. Hamilton allows each person inside the argument enough humanity to become inconvenient. The result is messy, funny, fiercely intelligent theatre.

Luke Casserly sits beside a large circular table covered in dark bog soil, his hands raised above an open book and enamel mug.

Reviews

The soil atop, the soil beneath: Distillation

Soil passes from hand to hand. Scent settles differently on each wrist. Luke Casserly’s Distillation makes an Irish bog sensuously present, while quietly opening questions about land, memory and place.

Ken Paolo stands closely behind Lawrence Hawkins, one hand resting on his shoulder, as both look out across the stage under low, warm lighting.

Reviews

The shape of love has changed: Rhomboid

Funny, tender and beautifully performed, Rhomboid explores the messy space between friendship and romantic love, and the limits of the language we use to describe how we feel about one another.

Emma J. Hawkins and Leisa Prowd stride forward in underwear and oversized fur coats, holding the coats open against deep red curtains.

Reviews

Look again: Exhibit

Funny, furious and unexpectedly moving, Exhibit turns the act of looking into its theatrical playground, poking at the gap between being looked at and being seen — and what happens when other people’s eyes begin to shape your own sense of self.

Gregory Nussen sits backwards on a chair, surrounded by stacks of books in a dark room.

Reviews

The possible versions of you: QFWFQ

Gregory Nussen’s extraordinary QFWFQ tumbles through Calvino, queerness, Jewishness, family and Palestine. Funny, formally audacious and achingly tender, it turns the unfinished story into something profoundly alive.

Vladimir and Estragon stand side by side on a sparse stage beneath a large glowing moon. A bare tree rises behind them, with a rock and a pair of boots in the foreground.

Reviews

Worth the wait: Waiting for Godot

Janice Muller’s Waiting for Godot is superbly performed: funny, affecting and completely absorbing. Tim Heath and Gus Read-Hill are glorious as Vladimir and Estragon, while Tim Rogers and Luke Lennox bring comic extravagance, menace and astonishing force to Beckett’s strange world.

Four dancers from Triptych emerge from near-darkness, their black costumes and partially lit bodies creating fragmented shapes against the black stage.

Reviews

The strange pleasure of being starved of light: Triptych

Lewis Major’s Triptych starves its audience of light, transforming bodies into fragments, images and traces. The result is technically astounding, exquisitely beautiful and completely hypnotic.