Reviews and Such

'We should at least play until we've all had our feelings hurt.'   Pictured, from left to right: Benny (Ingrid Nielsen) and Willa (Ashlee Lanza) Credit: Anna Henderson   After  Equus  and  The Almighty Sometimes , I was convinced my tour of plays that tackled psychology and the emotional injury inflicted upon their discussion was well and truly finished. That is, until I was invited to view a staging by Canberra College of  You Can't Tell Anyone , a play by Joanna Richards, commissioned by Canberra Youth Theatre in 2023. First performed in the Canberra Theatre Centre's Courtyard Studio, this show is a mature and intimate production that relies on its typically younger cast to enhance its identity and envelope any space within which it is performed. Luckily, Richards' play is given a worthy staging by some of Canberra's finest youth talent, who have successfully met the challenge set forth by this script.    Caitie Bissett emerges as a director to ...

  VIVIENNE: '“Look up, look up, look up,” the little girl said, and she flew around her mother, and did somersaults in the air, and walked along the clothesline, and made silly faces at the window, while the mother cried, and the skin turned to slush in her hands.'    Pictured, from left to right: Anna (Winsome Ogilvie) and Oliver (Robert Kjellgren) Credit: Photox - Canberra Photography   November seems to be a month of challenging theatre, both well-known and not. Despite the deep-seated discomfort these experiences can usher forth, it's good to know (depending on how you look at it) that today, there remain playwrights capable of taking your heart and crumbling it into their hands over the course of a Two-Act play. Such is the effect of  The Almighty Sometimes , an Australian family drama by Kendall Feaver, and the debut production of Off The Ledge Theatre. Despite this rather bleak picture I've painted for you,  The Almighty Sometimes is a piece that re...

  DYSART: That's what his stare has been saying to me all this time: 'At least I galloped - when did you?' The cast of  Equus .  Credit: Janelle McMenamin Equus  is a play by Peter Schaffer; one that carries with it immense prestige. Like a sort of taboo haunt, this play is one that is discussed frequently, yet eludes staging in a community setting due to the immense demands it makes of both its audiences, and the creatives that would hope to present it. A play of personal theology, how it clashes with psychiatry's understanding of it, and the effects this conversation can have on the personal state of affairs of all involved dialogues, it is no easy piece to digest, let alone present. Director Anne Somes has succeeded, with a triumphant vision that is determinable and impressive in its scope, presenting a simultaneously mythological, yet godless, work of drama that pulled from its crowd all the murmurs and whispers and left in its wake a foreboding silence that foll...