Lost and Found Orchestra, presented at the Sydney Festival by highly regarded British theatrical music company, The Stomp Company, is as joyful as it is inventive, as accessible as it is complex and as entertaining as it is original.
Written by its stars, Kate Smith and Drew Fairley it’s a farce in which a lovelorn crippled cop and a pert, determined sidekick provide the hook on which to hang a tenuous thriller where love conquers all.
Redheads follows the melodramatic lives of Ruth(Beth Champion) and Joanna(Emily Weare), two wannabe ‘twenty something’ spinsters who just want to feel loved.
Take an astute selection of top-drawer talents, mix with intelligence, fresh energy, an eye to the future and it's not surprising the results are better than pleasing.
Red Stitch’s Hellbent is an adaptation of the seventeenth century play The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. It’s a revenge tragedy, a hysterical melodrama of Shakespearean proportions served up with an extra dollop of nastiness and it’s wonderful.
A gifted embroider of words, Friel combines soft lyricism and hard meaning in his play, a tragical comical historical pastoral on a spree and spoiling for a spirited spar.
In the care of Pinchgut Opera’s director, Erin Helyard, this music, formulaic as it indeed is in some respects, sprang off the page into an experience rich in emotions.
Iolanthe and Janet Anderson work in cosmic, comedic accord, characterisation charismatic, timing impeccable, delivery precise, together a tour de force that ascends the cliché.
Blind faith and rational belief are always sparring partners in dramatic conflict and so it is here with the power play tinged with superstition and salaciousness.