Review: 70th Anniversary Gala (Opera Australia)
Avoiding greatest-hits predictability, the national opera company celebrated a milestone birthday with a satisfyingly thoughtful, ensemble-driven program.
Patricia Maunder has been an arts journalist since the 1990s, interviewing the likes of Sir Andrew Davis and Renée Fleming, and contributing to publications such as The Age and Opera (UK). Based in Melbourne, she’s passionate about opera, theatre and anything Baroque.
Avoiding greatest-hits predictability, the national opera company celebrated a milestone birthday with a satisfyingly thoughtful, ensemble-driven program.
This all-American musical starring Natalie Bassingthwaighte and Rob Mills is set apart by Grammy winner Sara Bareilles’s songs.
This clever new play written by and starring Megan Wilding seems to be a tennis-themed rom-com – until she starts lobbing truth bombs.
A fine cast led by Alison Whyte is kept too busy with comedy to do justice to the tragedy of Tennessee Williams’s memory play.
Mozart’s legendary libertine is back in this modest new production that can’t solve the opera’s misogyny but does justice to its timeless music.
This theatre-meets-cabaret Cinderella villain origin story stops short of turning the stereotypical evil stepmother into a fully rounded character.
The musical theatre adaptation of a 1980s cult cinema classic returns for another murderous round of high-school misfits versus mean girls and jocks.
Less is more in Suzanne Chaundy’s new production of a play about the Port Arthur massacre’s aftermath.
Michael Nyman’s chamber opera about a man with a curious neurological condition makes a rare appearance for its 40th anniversary.
With a fine cast and design that’s a triumph of simplicity, this new play reminds Melbourne of the tragedy behind its largest and busiest bridge.
Many arts organisations are now offering a range of accessible options from tactile tours to Auslan-interpreted and relaxed performances.
Playwright Jean Tong delivers a gently satirical exploration of the workplace and heartfelt representation of an unlikely friendship.
Indigenous women are front and centre in this meditative play about relationships with family and Country.