It's been over
two decades since Nick Enright's Blackrock was first performed, which explored the
fallout in a beachside town after a teenager is brutally gang raped and
murdered. Sadly these crimes have become a common occurrence in Australia, and
EbbFlow Theatre Co.'s production is a timely reminder as to
how little has changed in attitudes to violence against women.
Whereas Enright's play
focuses predominantly on the men and themes around loyalty and mateship,
director Nicola Bowman ensures that time is provided to the women of Blackrock and that their voices are heard. Ordinarily this would give a new perspective to the source
text but in this instance the majority of female characters are all angry and
disgusted by what has happened and while they are completely justified in this, it does not allow for
any dramatic tension and many of its teenage characters blend into one.
In Islamic religion, Muslim men who die as "believers" are
rewarded with 72 beautiful perpetual virgins as wives
in heaven. These women are known as houris. In Emina Ashman's Make Me A
Houri, two women who meet in the afterlife begin to question and confront
how religion and society view and use their bodies and their spirits.
Ashman creates some moving poetry with her story of these two women as they
come to grapple with their own desire and the expectations placed upon them. Regardless
how confronting the topics discussed are, through her considered and open dialogue, she allows the audience to lower their guard and be drawn into what
is transpiring. Where this story comes up short is that the characters are
largely unchanged throughout it. There is no build up to anything climatic or
revelatory and the women remain static as they recall personal experiences
that lead into deeper philosophical analysis.
Kevin Peterson is the new kid on the stand-up comedy block with his new show opening at The Butterfly Club. He's young, likeable and has the boy next door charm, but he's barely into his set when he is hit with a severe anxiety attack and becomes lost in his own distressing thoughts. Fortunately, this is not real life but the synopsis for Kevin Peterson’s Stand Up Show.
Written and directed by Max Paton, the show is a comedic and surreal look at what happens inside the mind of a man when he is struck with anxiety. Paton finds clever and intriguing ways in exploring Kevin's emotional and mental state and illustrates this brilliantly on stage. A constant highlight is seeing how the material from Kevin's stand-up routine, including "jokes" about Chris Hemsworth and platypus, is then referenced and used during his existential nightmare.
In her essay, Women and Fiction, Virginia Woolf discussed why women throughout history were so limited in achieving success in literature. The essay and the series of lectures it evolved into in 1928, remain a potent feminist examination on three areas: what women are like, women and the fiction they write, and women and the fiction written about them.
In A Room of One's Own Peta Hanrahan has taken Woolf's words and adapted them for the stage putting her 90-year-old thoughts under a compelling new light. First performed in 2016 at La Mama Theatre, Hanrahan's production returns for a second season at fortyfive downstairs with four actors expressing Woolf's thoughts and ideas as if they were an internal dialogue. Hanrahan eloquently interprets these to present an intelligent and articulate conversation on feminism while ensuring a relevance to the contemporary world we live in.
A serial killer is caught and spends the rest of his life in jail. While the victims' families might feel like justice has been served, what happens to the family of the serial killer? In Ashley Rose Wellman's You Are The Blood, the spotlight turns to the wife and children of David Boden, a man convicted of murdering seven people.
Shelby (Jessica Stanley) works as an office manager at a comedy club whose life is quite a mess, both literally and figuratively. Her mother Linda and brother Ben (Vivienne Powell and James Cerché) seem to be doing somewhat better but things reach a tipping point when it is reported that their murderous family member (Andrew Blackman) has recently become engaged to performance artist Sylvia (Jem Nicholas). Unfortunately, the story does not go much deeper than that and after almost 2.5 hours, you are left scratching your head and wondering how this production ended up much like Shelby's life.
