Side A - Melbourne Fringe Festival review

Amanda Santuccione grew up in the era of the cassette. More importantly, she grew up during the obsessions of making a kick-ass mix tape, which included checking your cassette was inserted right side up and patiently waiting for the second the radio presenter stopped talking over the start of the song before pressing record. It's a rite of passage that many of us have gone through, with the music we listen to helping us understand the world we live in and guiding us through life. In her Melbourne Fringe Festival show, Side A, Santuccione uses this idea to take us through some defining moments of her life, from the age of four to 33.

She begins by playing a recording of her younger self hosting a radio show before deep diving into the finer details of cassette maintenance. There's immediate rapport established between the audience and herself, with Santuccione's low-key performance projecting an openness and authenticity. It is because of this that the various anecdotes from her life, including her first kiss at age four, the pressures of teen sex and her crisis of faith, strike such a chord with us.

In A Heartbeat review

What are memories? What becomes of them as we - and the people with whom we’ve shared them with - begin to get older, frailer and eventually die? Barking Spider Visual Theatre specialise in creating unique experiences for audiences through immersive and interactive storytelling and with In A Heartbeat, the company allows us to take a heart warming visit to the years gone by.

We are greeted by a flurry of excitable hosts (Ashleigh Gray, Emma Telford, Jaime Chapman, Rachel Duffy, Laura Aldous and Chloe Smith) who guide us to one of five tables that are adorned with teacups, hot tea and an assortment of homemade biscuits and sweets. The women wear colourful patterned skirts with aprons tied around their waists, bright blouses and various pieces of jewellery, reminiscent of your stereotypical 1950s fashion.

One Suitcase: Four Stories review

In Italian culture, family and close friends always enter the house from the back door. The thinking behind this being that the back door leads to the kitchen and the kitchen is where everything happens. So, in Barking Spider Visual Theatre's latest production, One Suitcase: Four Stories, it's only fitting that we are taken round the Northcote Town Hall and enter from the back entrance.

Our host, Linda Catalano, welcomes us with open arms into her 'kitchen', and by looking at the set design by Tristan Shelley, you would think it was a real kitchen that has been in use for years and filled with many stories to tell. We take our seat at one of the five dinner tables with six other people and immediately, we all have a sense of familiarity with each other and conversation and jokes flow. Such is the power of good food! 

Endings review

There is a familiar smell in the air as I take my seat at Arts House theatre. Even though I can’t quite put my finger on it, it feels like rain on a cold, wet night with mist and fog in the air, which subsequently fits in nicely with the show I am about to see, about death. In Endings, Tamara Saulwick explores our attempts to stay connected with loved ones after they have passed away.

Saulwick explores this concept in a very intimate setting with pre-recorded conversations with people who have lost loved ones as well as opening up about the death of her own father. These recordings and conversations describe not only the moments leading up to the death but the thoughts and actions immediately following. One person mentions photographing the deceased with family members and another recalls the shock of hospital staff at a request to bathe the deceased.