Celebrating 30 Years of Finucane & Smith at Luna Park

Hip hip hooray! Finucane & Smith are turning 30, and naturally, they’re celebrating in the only way they know how: with a gloriously unrestrained carnival of cabaret, burlesque, music, dance, comedy, glamour, chaos and more than a little bit of diva.

Over the past 30 years, Finucane & Smith have created 36 full-length shows, performed across 19 countries, toured 160 Australian towns, entertained more than a million audience members and collected 21 awards along the way. Not bad for a company that has done it all without a penny of ongoing funding.

To mark three decades of making wildly inventive, genre-defying art, the company is returning to Melbourne's iconic Luna Park for Dance Palace, a month-long party running every weekend from mid-August. Dance Palace will bring together a dazzling cast of performers for an event that promises, in true Finucane & Smith fashion, to be anything but predictable. Expect pub rock queens, Bollywood love gods, torch singers, burlesque artists, First Nations performers, gothic legends, live painting, flying pants and plenty of surprises along the way.

Ahead of the glorious mayhem to come, we spoke to a dozen of the 30 performers taking part in Dance Palace about the show, the company, and what makes Finucane & Smith such a singular force in Australian performance.

VISTA review | Malthouse Theatre

What if you could watch the same story twice, but see something completely different the second time? This is the intriguing premise of Stephanie Lake's new dance work VISTA, which presents two acts as two contrasting versions of the same reality. The first is a precise, monochromatic world of dynamic physicality, music and light. After the interval, this previously seen world returns in a bold burst of colour, with familiar movements and ideas transformed by a fresh perspective. Through this clever structural conceit, VISTA challenges the audience to reconsider what they think they know. As choreography, relationships and images return in altered forms, the work demonstrates how dramatically context can change our understanding of an experience.

Our Seventh String review | The Motley Bauhaus

In Our Seventh String, six friends and former housemates reunite at their Melbourne sharehouse after seven years apart. Over the course of the evening, long-held rivalries, love confessions, heartbreaks, and old resentments are reopened as the group contends with the changes they have all undergone in the intervening years, and what happens when the people you have spent so much of your life with are no longer the people with whom you should spend the rest of it.

Paperfolk Theatre is a new independent theatre company with emphasis on folk-inspired work, so it is no surprise that music plays a significant role in Our Seventh String. With music and lyrics by Emily Napolitano, Henry Smith and Lauren Green, the production features some moving and heartfelt songs, with well-crafted melodies and a variety of instruments that complement the various voices. With seven performers, there is a great range of vocal styles, but it is the duet with Frances (Miriam Ellins) and Thea (Harper Elwyn) that stands out as a particular highlight.

Rabbit & Watson review | Darebin Arts Speakeasy

Love has always inspired stories of devotion, sacrifice and impossible odds, but few take that journey quite as literally as Rabbit & Watson. Shane Woon's latest work reimagines the Chinese mythological figure Tu'er Shen, the Rabbit God of gay matchmaking, placing him in the unlikely world of Australian football. When Rabbit's centuries-old lover returns as Watson, a rising AFL player, he must navigate love, identity and the expectations placed upon him across the celestial and human realms. Blending Chinese mythology, Boys' Love, fantasy and AFL culture, Rabbit & Watson is a thoughtful exploration of what it means to search for belonging while carrying the weight of history, family and tradition.

Normally, I would bristle at the idea of a two-hour show without an interval, but Woon's concept and storytelling are so intriguing and refreshing that I never found myself growing restless or checking the time. Even so, the script would benefit from some judicious editing to tighten its structure. A subplot involving young footballers Cypress and Jaxson could be removed without diminishing the central narrative or its engagement with homophobia, sexuality, and relationships. With another character already questioning their sexuality, this storyline is repetitive rather than expanding the narrative, diluting the impact of the more compelling arcs.

Heartbreak Hotel review | Arts Centre Melbourne

Heartbreak is one of life's few universal experiences, yet no two people navigate it in quite the same way. In Heartbreak Hotel, New Zealand theatre-maker Karin McCracken transforms the aftermath of a failed relationship into an inventive blend of comedy, reflection, music, and science, inviting audiences to laugh at the messiness of love while recognising a little of themselves along the way.

Heartbreak Hotel is an exploration of what happens after a relationship ends, not just emotionally, but physically and psychologically. McCracken draws on her own experience, scientific research and pop culture to examine the strange ways heartbreak manifests, from obsessive thoughts and unanswered questions to the physical response to loss. Rather than presenting a linear narrative, McCracken constructs the work as a collage of ideas, where seemingly disparate threads gradually reveal themselves to be woven together, resulting in a performance that is intellectually curious and authentic. Her writing is witty and self-aware while acknowledging the pain of heartbreak.