Queensland Ballet, Playhouse, QPAC, Brisbane, August 1. ONE masterwork, a party piece and two relatively new dances that look far better than they are provide an entertaining but creatively uneven program at Queensland Ballet. Very much on the plus side is that the company looks energised despite the rigours of the Romeo and Juliet season…
Three for the road
The King and I, Princess Theatre, July 22; Into the Woods, Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, July 22; Les Miserables, Her Majesty’s, Melbourne COME October next year Les Miserables will have been running for 30 years in London, longer than any other musical. Well, I suppose it’s possible Cameron Mackintosh will close the show before then,…
Complexities of human existence
Ken Unsworth Studio, Alexandria, Sydney, July 16 THE accepted wisdom is that dance careers are brutally short and in many – probably most – cases they are. The performers who break that barrier should be cherished. They may not have the effortless flexibility and super-human extensions they once had, but since when did elasticity equal…
‘No vine leaves? Whatever.’
Belvoir, July 8 ADENA Jacobs’s production of Hedda Gabler is perverse not for her casting of a man as Hedda – it’s an intriguing starting point – but for the failure to make anything much of it. Belvoir’s Hedda Gabler is weightless to quite a marvellous degree. Jacobs writes in her adaptor and director’s note:…
Rojo, McRae, Acosta at QB
Queensland Ballet, Brisbane, June 27, July 1,2,3 ROMEO and Juliet was a success in every possible way for Queensland Ballet, starting with the very fact of its presence in Brisbane. Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet is the gold standard for dance versions of Shakespeare’s play and is monumental, needing much larger forces than QB can ordinarily summon….
Affecting ardour
Queensland Ballet, Lyric Theatre, Brisbane, June 27 KENNETH MacMillan’s Romeo and Juliet is big in every way. At street level testosterone-fuelled gangs jostle and fight in the marketplace, revelling in their ancient grudge, as Shakespeare called it. Inside the great house of Lord Capulet the tumult is even greater, but is within the hearts of…
‘This is for the little brown girls’
ON March 26 this year American Ballet Theatre soloist Misty Copeland told website blacknews.com that “I would love to be Odette-Odile in Swan Lake one day. I think that would be the ultimate role.” Copeland will get her wish when ABT visits Brisbane in late August and early September. At a date yet to be…
The camp-o-meter turned up to 15
Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, June 20. RUTHLESS! The Musical could with much accuracy be called Shameless! As it charts the incident-packed life of a stage-obsessed tyke and her perhaps not so ordinary Mom, Ruthless! cheerfully plunders Gypsy and All About Eve for characters and motivations and pays homage to any number of Broadway shows, including…
Zest and immediacy
Bell Shakespeare, Canberra Theatre Centre, June 15. As Bell nears the end of its long run of Henry V, here’s what I wrote after its premiere in Canberra… IN an air raid shelter during the Blitz in London, some young people delve into bookshelves and pull out Shakespeare. Their stage is a room with a…
‘A string of pearls’
Patyegarang, Bangarra Dance Theatre. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, June 12. THE story of young indigenous woman Patyegarang and Lieutenant William Dawes of the First Fleet is rare and precious. In the tumultuous first years of white settlement, as the British colonisers imposed themselves and their culture on what is now the glittering city of Sydney…
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