Idea: Love
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In James Graham’s The Man, quite a lot. Ben is attempting his first tax return. As a sole trader, he has accumulated a year’s worth of receipts that must now be classified as either an EXPENSE or NO EXPENSE. Except the receipts contain information no tax return can record. A journey. A relationship. An embarrassment.…
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The performances in Strategic Love Play are so completely natural that it barely feels like theatre. The pauses land like real pauses. The hesitations feel genuinely uncertain. The interruptions, the awkward laughs, the tiny shifts in confidence — all of it feels like two people actually trying to work each other out in real time.…
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Can we accept that our parents did what they could without pretending it was enough? My First and Last Solo Show began as Natalie Rose’s attempt to create an extraordinary gift for her daughter Mabelle using the skills she had: naturally, she made her a theatre show. Then Mabelle busted in—and what was meant to…
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The Drover’s Wife feels completely at home on the Joan Sutherland Theatre stage. Leah Purcell’s Molly Johnson remains a formidable presence throughout: a woman surviving the brutality of the Australian bush, protecting her children and navigating a world shaped by violence, racism and increasingly complicated questions about her own identity. The performances across the company…
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La Traviata is opera at its most devastatingly beautiful. From Verdi’s sweeping score to the sheer scale and elegance of the production, this is the kind of show that reminds you why opera has endured (eat it @tchalamet). The music is breathtaking, the performances are emotionally charged, and the set design is genuinely spectacular —…
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“Vivacious, playful and delightfully effervescent.” I hadn’t experienced an operetta before, and if The Merry Widow is anything to go by, I’ve clearly been missing out. Opera Australia’s sumptuous new production is an absolute delight. Set against the glamour of the Jazz Age, each of the three acts unveils another breathtaking set that somehow surpasses…
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Some stories ask how we repair what has been damaged. House of Rot asks something more difficult: whether a life can still hold beauty, intimacy and meaning when the damage cannot simply be fixed. Sometimes the most beautiful stories aren’t about fixing what’s broken. They’re about discovering that beauty can still exist while you’re living…
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Being chosen can feel so much like being loved that we stop asking what it costs us. Heathers understands popularity and romantic love as parallel forms of seduction. The Heathers make Veronica feel socially chosen; J.D. makes her feel personally understood. Both gradually shift the boundaries of what she is willing to excuse until complicity…
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The poor sing together. The rich merely stand together. Opera Australia’s lavish revival of My Fair Lady may be dressed in the visual language of a traditional Golden Age musical, but its most revealing distinction between the classes isn’t money, clothing or pronunciation. It is how emotion is experienced. Within Covent Garden, joy and hardship…
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Power isn’t just about having more than everyone else. Sometimes it’s about having the freedom to step into other people’s worlds without ever having to live with what you leave behind. That’s the tragedy at the heart of Rigoletto. Opera Australia’s production makes this idea tangible through a stunning revolving set. Each turn reveals another…
