Patch Theatre. 14 Aug 2026
It’s quite a show that can hold both adults and children spellbound. Me and My Shadow (MaMS for brevity) is that show. We all love a bit of shadow play, and while MaMS has plenty of it, it takes that extra step into magic and mystery (how do they do that?!), delighting and entertaining the entire audience.
Artistic Director Geoff Cobham has brought back original cast members Astrid Pill and Nathan O’Keefe for this anniversary show and it’s a lovely touch; they bring as much energy and playfulness to their work as they did all those years ago. Astrid as the little girl who discovers her shadow brings a lovely whimsy to the role, while Nathan plays the Shadow as cheeky but entirely loveable.
To the accompaniment of Zoe Barry’s musical score, the shadow play develops subtly but inevitably, from when the girl first discovers the Shadow, to the natural development of his own character. Many of us had an imaginary friend when we were young and this blend of physical theatre, of colour play, and sound makes that experience all the more magical.
The pair play well together; their familiarity works to keep the flow natural and gentle, and each surprise is dealt with as a thing of wonder by each of them. In your imagination, anything can happen, and in this show just about everything does. Arms that stretch forever, lights that fly through the sky, robots that wear paper bags – as long as you think it’s real, it is!
Lighting is everything in shadow play, and Geoff Cobham brings his long experience to this show, there were moments when each of us wanted to jump and be the small person or the giant! The cleverness of it all meant that we didn’t see some of the sleight of hand at work – we still want to know how some of that magic happened, like the firefly lights, and the scissors, and the collapsing bag and…
First mounted in 2010 by Patch Theatre, when it was rewarded with a Helpmann Award, Me and My Shadow has a fresh new look but remains true to the original production. This is just such a pleasure to watch – take the kids, they’ll love you for it.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 15, 22, and 29 August
Where: The Space Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Holden Street Theatres. 12 Aug 2026
Playwright Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside is redolent with the most densely beautiful writing. A magnificent tour de force exploration of the literary and personal lives of Yale Professor Bella Baird (Michelle Nightingale) and nervy, louche but intelligent student Christopher Dunn ( Benji Riggs).
Rapp’s text is a complex one. Delivered at times in first person by Nightingale and Riggs, interposed with commentary.
It’s like experiencing a novel within a novel. There’s always this strange sense of crossing from reality to fiction and back as Baird remembers her interaction with this socially obtuse, yet intense would-be writer. Contrasts that with her personal life, literary life.
These two differing personalities linked by the world of letters; a professor staring cancer in the face, a student seeking certainty in the fictional, offer a journey into what it means to live, perhaps not to be really alive. Is ‘life’ a written achievement? Do ‘rules’ achieve anything?
Director Nick Fagan’s set design splits the space into three realms; Baird’s home, park space, and Baird’s office. Martin Smith’s lighting is sparsely functional.
Rapp’s text demands its interpreters rise to a significant challenge. Avoid letting it do the heavy work for you. Dig deeper to find expression beyond its seductive other worldly smoothness. There is a greater reality underneath this text. Beyond text, is a human condition that subsumes text.
Nick Fagan’s direction is functional to the surface intent of the work. Michele Nightingale’s performance is the better of the two. There’s a richness in her work. Benji Riggs offers a cut and paste lost young man not up to the complexity the character demands.
There are dual realities at play in this work. It demands they be addressed, even if that seems beyond a cast of two. As pleasant as the experience might be, not meeting that challenge makes for a less than fulfilling experience.
David O’Brien
When: 11 to 29 Aug
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: Holden Street Theatres
Pelican Productions. Arts Theatre. 8 Aug 2026
Grease has become one of the modern standards of musical theatre. It’s the contemporary West Side Story, although interestingly they’re both set in the 1950’s and feature teenage lovers who have to overcome one or two obstacles. For Grease, rather than the tragedy of Tony and Maria (or Romeo and Juliet) played out in the tenements of New York, we have the experiences of writers Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey set in a working class Rydell High School in Chicago.
The production has become a bit more sanitised over the years – while there is still a reference to teenage pregnancy and an allusion of gang warfare, all the sharp edges have been blunted, and it’s pretty much family fare.
Everyone knows the plot and the songs by now; the musical has been performed since 1971 and the film just pushed it into the stratosphere – one of the songs We Go Together is even featured in the animated children’s feature The Secret Life of Pets.
There are two casts sharing this performance duties in this production; this review covers Cast 2. The show opens with Grease is the Word and this gives a promising indication of what is to come from Director Vanessa Lee Shirley. The energy is high, the voices are strong and the poodle skirts flash across the stage in a cacophony of bright colours (Costume Designers Kylie Green and Emma Pool). There are a few sound smudges but these are worked out as we go along.
The performers are supported by a fantastic live band, who sit atop the action on a mezzanine floor. They really came to the fore with some great saxophone and trombone particularly in Hand Jive; under the direction of Ben Francis the band kept it pumping all night. Nic Collins choreography is as tight as you would expect for performers schooled in dance, and vocally, there were some real standouts. Of particular note was Connor Foreman as Roger singing Mooning, a beautiful tenor with a great falsetto.
There were more triple threats than you could shake your booty at. Alek Kudra and Ali Burns (Danny and Sandy) anchored this great ensemble, with great performances from Henry Green (Kenickie) and Caitlin Laventure as the defensive but tough talking leader of the Pink Ladies, while Francis Osei-Tuttu does a fine turn on the dance floor. Mark Stefanoff’s Beauty School Dropout is another highlight while the standout is the entire company coming together for the afore mentioned We Go Together.
The twist in Grease that stands it apart from many redemption tales, is that the rough boy Danny is not tamed by the good girl Sandy; instead she conforms to his ideals, losing the skirt and cardigan for leather pants, tight tops and sexy dance moves and a rip roaring version of You’re the One That I Want. It’s perhaps the best-known song in this musical, along with Hopelessly Devoted to You, yet neither of them belong to the original stage version, both being written by Australian John Farrar for the movie. This is one of those instances where the various versions of a production have melded together to create a stronger whole.
Pelican Productions has a long history in youth theatre and they have a great pool of performers to call on from their various classes and workshops. There are performers at differing levels of their development, but the ensemble work is to be lauded.
In terms of the contemporary appeal of Grease, I have to relate a conversation had in the audience. A young man asked about the location when Sandy and Danny are grappling in the front seat of Greased Lightning. When told they were at the drive-in, there was a slight pause, then the question, ‘What’s a drive-in?’. How time goes by.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 8 to 9 Aug
Where: Arts Theatre
When: Closed
Adelaide University Theatre Guild. Little Theatre. 7 Aug 2026
Alistair’s McDowells Pomona is considered one of the new breed of horror, dystopian theatre pieces, albeit it was written in 2014. Ollie (as in Oliver, as in the boy’s name) is searching for her missing sister who she believes to be somewhere in Manchester. Through meetings with various characters, she ends up in Pomona, a seemingly abandoned concrete island in the middle of the city with one road in and out.
The mystery of Pomona is rather like the Tom Waits song What’s He Building? Except in this instance, we get to find out.
It’s a very clever script, turning circular before you realise what’s happening, light bulb moments catching you unawares. It’s a bit like a reverse engineered jigsaw puzzle as characters loop back to show how they got into their current position.
It’s gender fluid in terms of the characters; women play all the male roles bar one – Louis Bianchini plays Moe, a security guard at Pomona who craves human touch. It’s a difficult role, but he carries it off well, and the scene with him and rebellious sex worker (Fay Airlie-Jade Windle) is beautifully realised.
Macey Lawson is Zeppo, who owns half the city and tries to warn Ollie (Mia Livingston-Pierce) off. She’s a little difficult to understand at first but settles into her rhythm. Jessie Chugg’s Charlie works very hard, and with so much centred around this character, it’s a big ask which is mostly successful.
There are moments that are a bit redundant; a chorus scene adds little and much of the exposition of the close could be left behind, but that’s the script.
Lily Watkins character Keaton plays it a little darker but the follow through doesn’t really happen. Perhaps the most successful is Gale (Airlie-Jade Windle), the brothel owner who has gotten in too deep. She knows the horrors of Pomona and is terrified of becoming a victim, while at the same time being an antagonist.
The cast make a fair fist of Pomona, but it doesn’t really deliver the anxiety and angst that the play calls for. Rather than going off between their scenes, Director Thomas Midena has the actors waiting in the darkness in corners of the stage; this does deliver a sense of menace but it isn’t always reflected in the characterisations when they walk on stage. The end result is the tension is released and needs be built up again; unfortunate because the final reveal oft hinted at but still needs to pack a powerful punch.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 7 to 16 Aug
Where: Little Theatre, Adelaide University
Bookings: trybooking.com
Teen edition. Scotch College. Thebarton Theatre. 6 Aug 2026
The Broadway production of Hadestown was named Best Musical in 2019; still playing to sellout audiences in New York and on the West End stage, it also picked up eight Tony Awards. This is the ‘Teen Edition’ which is a little shorter and edited for a younger age group.
This is a musical with a difference. Based on Anais Mitchell’s 2010 concept album, Hadestown eschews the spoken word in favour of song, and while at times it can feel a little relentless, it works.
The Greek gods certainly had a right old time – when they weren’t flying around on golden chariots, they were swallowing spouses, giving birth to winged horses and chaining people to rocks while eagles ate their liver.
This story is a bit simpler and a whole lot nicer, though still with a tragic ending. Narrated by Hermes (William Jarvis), this is the age-old story of Orpheus (Sebastian Cox) and Eurydice (Sienna Turner), Hades (Tom Wetherall) and Persephone (Eleanor Driver), of love lost and won. Eurydice has been taken to the Underworld by Hades and Orpheus must rescue her. Hades wife Persephone is all for the lovers being reunited, and as she can move between the two worlds, becomes a prime mover in getting Hades to let her go.
David Lampard’s set is of two stations, above and below the earth, with the allusion informed by the rollicking and soulful Road to Hell, which sets the tone for this contemporary revisiting of the ancient tale.
Accompanied by the Hadestown Orchestra (conductor Martin Cheney) this production showcases some quite remarkable young singers under the direction of Stephanie Thompson who, along with Carla Laurendi, choreographs superbly what could have been an unwieldy troupe of performers.
The three Fates (Evie Dolling, Ashleigh Sykes, and Charlotte Venning) are almost Andrews Sister-esque in their performance, with their tight harmonies and sassy moves. And sassy personifies Persephone (in dazzling emerald green) as she romps through the drinking song Living It Up on Top, before going on down to the Underworld where she joins her husband Hades, who presides over what appears to be a mining community, a subterranean nightmare with the inhabitants toiling for Hades.
The stage is always slightly dark, as the characters try and push through to the light via miners’ headlamps or handheld lanterns. It’s highly evocative and adds to the mystery of the Underworld.
The chorus/ensemble doesn’t shy away from the big moves - a highlight of their performance is Why We Build the Wall with Hades, a moving and telling comment on contemporary society as much as it is a defence of the Underworld.
The cast were apparently workshopping and rehearsing this show for about six months, and it shows in the very professional stagework and timing of both principals and ensemble cast. With a budget that many companies would crawl over broken glass for, this is a very high-end production and one that many of these students will look back on with wonderment, that this level of theatre was available to them. It’s also a real treat for audiences; this cast is top notch – Sebastian Cox as Orpheus is just stunning – and is of a calibre one more often finds in adult professional theatre.
It should be noted that there are two principal casts; this review is of Cast One, although Sebastian Cox plays through the season.
Arna Eyers-White
Where: Thebarton Theatre
When: 6 to 9 Aug
Bookings: ticketmaster.com.au