British director Matthew Warchus had two musicals open within about four months of one another. One was Matilda the Musical, the Royal Shakespeare Company production that premiered in Stratford-upon-Avon in November 2010 before opening in the West End in October the following year; and Ghost the Musical, based on the popular 1990 film, which started…
Category: Musical theatre
Little Shop of Horrors
Luckiest Productions & Tinderbox Productions. Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, February 23. RESISTANCE is useless Earthlings. Little Shop of Horrors is back and roaring for warm blood. Human blood. Your blood. I doubt it will be denied, at least in cult-musicals circles. The greatly cherished show has an almost mystical following and, with this production, should…
Theatre artists of the year (and my inaugural Artist of the Year)
One person’s best is another person’s “I can’t believe we saw the same show”. Which if course we never do or can. We each bring to the theatre our history, our personality, our experiences, our experience, our tastes and our bête noirs. So why these lists at year’s end? Well, they serve as reminders of…
The Sound of Music
Capitol Theatre, Sydney, December 17. A new production of Fiddler on the Roof has just opened in New York, directed by Broadway revival rainmaker Bartlett Sher. The musical, created in 1964, tells of the existential threat faced by a community of Jews in Imperial Russia, whom we see living their lives much as their ancestors…
Ladies in Black
Queensland Theatre Company, Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, November 19 BY the end of Ladies in Black its sweet, gawky duckling of a heroine has been transformed into a soignée swan, and in just six weeks. Why, without her glasses and with her hair up, young Lisa Miles is quite a looker. Goodbye school, hello world….
Grey Gardens, with special reference to women in theatre
Squabbalogic Independent Music Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney, November 20. On Monday night I went to an inspiring meeting in Sydney organised by Women in Theatre and Screen – WITS – to discuss gender inequity in the arts and to plan a positive, sensible, achievable course of action. One of the greatest truths spoken was that…
High and low
High Society, Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, September 7; Anything Goes, Sydney Opera House, September 8 IN one giddy night of mayhem, pairs of lovers – former, would-be, should-be, desperately mismatched – ricochet around in the search for a safe harbour. Intoxicants are taken, identities are mistaken, the low-born mingle with the high-born, a man is very…
Matilda the Musical and memories of childhood
Matilda the Musical, Lyric Theatre, Sydney I’M sorry. I make no apology for the following revelation because it’s relevant. I was the intellectual of the Kindergarten class at St Columba’s, Ballarat North. I could read before I started school and thus, when the teacher – not a sympathetic one, I fear – took us endlessly…
Berlin, Paris, Verona, Worcester County
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Belasco Theatre, May 21; An American in Paris, Palace Theatre, May 22; The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Polonsky Shakespeare Centre, Brooklyn, May 23 (matinee); The Flick, Barrow Street Theatre, May 24 IS there a more gallant, a more scintillating, a more lovable character on Broadway right now than Hedwig, in the person of…
On the town
Hayes Theatre Co, May 7 IN February 2012 The New York Times published a short article about Dogfight, which would have its Off-Broadway premiere six months later at Second Stage Theater. This is how Patrick Healy’s report ended: “… Lincoln Center Theater originally commissioned and developed the musical but passed on producing it because the…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 