Reviews and Such

OSCAR: "May I see you tomorrow? Maybe we could go to a movie." CHARITY: "Okay, but one with a happy ending. I'm nuts about happy endings." Charity Hope Valentine (Amy Orman) and Oscar Lindquist (Joshua Kirk) in Sweet Charity . Photo: Photox Here was a man, with some dreams (irrelevant), and a plan to grab a couple buddies, and go see a Friday night showing of Free-Rain Theatre Company's latest offering,  Sweet Charity . And it is very tempting to continue paraphrasing the titular tune of the show, but these reviews are hard enough to read as is. A show with many years up its sleeve, this is one that has eluded me successfully in the musical theatre canon for a while now, yet it is a title that rings a familiar bell. I had never seen it, of that I was sure. I knew that the title was the name of a character, and I could hum a couple of its tunes that I'd heard snippets of here and there, but otherwise, nothin'! It's not often I get to experience a ...

  "Well, why shouldn't I have fun?" P ictured, from left to right: Ruth (Alex McPherson), Charles (Peter Holland) and Elvira (Winsome Ogilvie) in Canberra REP's  Blithe Spirit . Photo by Eve Murray. Blithe Spirit  is a classic farce of recent interest to me, and Canberra REP's production is one I've been looking forward to for the last few months. The show in concept alone is brilliant in just how marvellously everything in it is capable of unravelling, to much of the delight of any audience subject to the chaos: a middle-aged author invites a medium into his home to inform a stereotype in his latest work, and accidentally summons a previous lover from the spectral plain, who wishes to settle some unfinished business. This show is a complete and utter all-timer, and it's not very difficult to see why. Its characters are memorable in their eccentricities, Coward's humour is memorably droll and fun, and the premise lends itself to the creativity of those...