The group uses electronic and recorded, as well as live music, and gives some importance to visual design and staging. This wide-ranging perspective certainly lends considerable interest to its performances, but the results are mixed.
With its somersaulting ‘acro-fairies’, a punch-up between leading ladies Hermia and Helena, and a completely manic Puck inclined to moon the audience at whim, this is one revved up, madcap production of what is arguably Shakepeare’s best-loved comedy.
The Spook was inspired by the true story of a young man recruited by ASIO in the 1960s and asked to masquerade as a communist whilst spying on his local party branch. However, as Reeves assures us in her program notes, The Spook is a totally fictional and sometimes ludicrous version of the story.
We become engrossed in the web of intricacy of this Chilton 'clique' as we are exposed to each boy's personalities and learn of their contribution to the group dynamic.
LaBute’s cycle of plays is the very definition of the term ‘variations on a theme’. A series of slow-burn mono and duologues, each set in the front seat of a car, the cycle serves, sometimes too explicitly, as a kind of social rap sheet.
It’s been almost 15 years since The Book of Mormon premiered on Broadway and even longer since Joseph Smith ‘discovered’ the golden plates that provided the inspiration for the show.
However earnest and inarguably lovely it is to look at, the pedestrian sexual indulgence and relationship traumas of New York 'A' gays penned 9 years ago doesn't feel particularly urgent.
Capturing the essence of its predecessor, Heathers The Musical is an absurdly comic production that doesn’t just walk the line of polite society but plans to blow it all up with reckless abandon.