REVIEW: Conversations with Dead Relatives (The Basement)

April 5, 2018

[Badly Remembered or Forgotten?] “If you don’t know where you come from, how do you know where you’re going?” — Alex in Conversations Conversations with Dead Relatives is an intimate and heart-warming play written and performed by partners Alex Ellis and Phil Ormsby, and directed by Jennifer Ward-Lealand. Shifting between oral storytelling and dramatic re-enactment, the play begins all the […]

REVIEW: The South Afreakins (The Basement)

August 17, 2017

[Super Gold (card)] When I think of white South Africans, a couple things come to mind: Apartheid, the Springboks, the religious psychos who used to live up the street and, of course, the bad guys in Lethal Weapon 2. It says something that The South Afreakins managed to win me over. To cut to the chase, this show is great. Written and […]

REVIEW: Lucinda the Cactus Girl (The Basement)

October 22, 2016

[Prickly in a good way] It’s the second time in seven days I have watched toast being made in the Basement loft. The first was in Kate Bartlett’s Madwoman/Gentlewoman. For Kate, the toast was left dry, like her tumbleweed humour, part of some infinitely fathomable ritual of daily being. By contrast, Lizzie Morris of Lucinda The Cactus Girl cheerfully lathers […]

REVIEW: Tennessee Retro (The Basement)

October 20, 2016

[Southern Discomfort] Of the three major post-war American playwrights, Tennessee Williams strikes me as the most emotionally rich and rewarding, a master observer of the human condition and poet of the stage. But, despite his influence and legacy, it tends to be The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that he is best […]

REVIEW: Milky Bits (The Basement)

June 15, 2016

[Vision Boards A go-go] Three friends (Chris Parker, Hayley Sproull and Leon Wadham) are lost on a windy heath. After finding each other, they declare their mutual devotion and vow to return on the anniversary of their ordeal to celebrate their enduring bond. And that about does it for plot. When I first heard the title ‘Milky Bits’, I was […]

REVIEW: WHITE/OTHER (The Basement)

April 14, 2016

[White Noise] “I feel most coloured when I am thrown against a sharp white background” —Zora Neale Hurston While never explicitly quoted in the show, this statement seems to inform the entire world of WHITE/OTHER. From the text to the set design to performer Alice Canton’s very own biracial identity, whiteness is everywhere. And Alice’s otherness—specifically, her Chinese half—becomes the […]

REVIEW: Fabricate (The Basement)

April 14, 2016

[Lightweight Material] Which came first, the artistic intention or the audience interpretation? Without the former to react to, can an audience truly respond with the latter? While Fabricate does not lack intention, what intention it does have is limited. As recent graduates, Reece Adams, Lydia Connolly-Hiatt, Caitlin Davey, Cushla Roughan, and Rodney Tyrell have the right collective purpose in presenting […]

REVIEW: Little Child of Miracle (The Basement)

March 31, 2016

[A thing made-with-joy] There are certain creatures in our theatre scene that operate under long periods of dormancy. You know the types – they tiptoe in and out of other people’s processes, keeping themselves on a low simmer. You know they are there – designing shows, writing the odd monologue, sometimes co-directing, part of the indelible infrastructure of our sprawling […]

REVIEW: Miss Jean Batten (Flaxworks)

March 30, 2016

[Solo Flight] “Flying is the easy part,” Jean Batten tells us with a smirk and a quirk of a brow. She struggles with the judgement and disapproval of men, who fear a woman will do what they never have: cross the Tasman from England to New Zealand, in her tiny plane, and break the world record.  Convention and propriety are […]

REVIEW: The Glitta Supernova Experience (The Basement)

March 23, 2016

[All that Glittas is definitely not Gold] “WTF was that?” was the simultaneous reaction from my theatre buddy and I as soon as the lights came on. As someone who’s seen a heap of burlesque cabaret theatre over the years I can tell you that I’m no prude in any shape or form. However Glitta Supernova strutting her ‘stuff’ on […]

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