OzAsia. Antinomy Company. Nexua Arts Centre. 31 Oct 2025
History, culture and lives of women in Asia are an extremely complex unknown to us in the West.
Director Li Yun and Performer Cheng Shih-Yung offer an experience that begins with a warm, building of a relationship with the audience centred on seemingly simple cultural beliefs, practices and institutions all focused on a belief (in many things) and something that unites us all, an obsession with one’s fate in life.
What becomes of us, who we are as a personal, cultural, and national identity is not clear cut in Asian society in some cases. It was most certainly more uncertain in 1957 when Cheng’s Grandmother left China for new life and an arranged marriage.
The tale is told by framing it on the Zi Wei Dou Shu form of Chinese Astrology and its 12 houses of life. A journey of migration, colonisation, subjugation, and survival brilliantly told by melding Cheng’s own complicated blend of Chinese, Taiwanese, and Malaysian heritage as it affected her student life in Taiwan.
Embarking on a Drift into The Unknown is a deeply meditative work, more powerfully so by the addition of an extra layered dimension through the use of wireless headphones that sonically amplify the emotive power of simple sounds, musical instruments, and speak for Cheng when involved in action only. Lin Jhao An’s set design and Chien Fang-Yu’s lighting are a perfect fusion of carefully managed light and dark, essential to establishing a sense of time past, time present. Wen Cheng-Han’s sound design is utterly masterful in its capacity to blend seamlessly with story and action to the point it is noticed not as imposed, but enhancing in very deeply affecting ways.
Cheng’s performance is subtly sublime, deeply measured and astute in emotional transitions between her personal story and that of her ancestor and ancestor’s world.
What we come to understand as Cheng’s tale unfolds is fate for an Asian woman is tied as much to name at birth and more. A superb contrast is drawn to inclusion of excerpts from Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Eurpides Medea.
A European/Western parallel is drawn with such subtle starkness, it’s impossible not to grasp the deeper meaning in what this work is seeking to explore and say about a woman’s lot in Asia and South-East Asia.
It is a difficult thing attempting to ‘translate’ a cultural experience in contemporary and historic terms. Yet in unspoken ways, this is achieved.
While the work’s innate power would be greatly served by tightening transitions, it is nonetheless a powerful, significant experience of communicating a new understanding of ancient and contemporary realities.
David O’Brien
When: 31 Oct to 1 Nov
Where: Nexus Arts Centre
Bookings: Closed
Oz Asia Festival. Adelaide Town Hall. 31 Oct 2025
It was an epic autobiographical spectacular and it was for one night only.
What a night.
The Town Hall was packed to the proverbial.
The stage was loaded with fabulous musicians beneath a giant screen.
The audience was braced and expectant. Love was in the air. Lots of love.
The subject of this mass attendance and cherishing spirit was one William Yang.
A simple photographer.
A Chinese Australian from the flyspeck town of Dimbulah on Queensland’s Atherton Tableland.
But how this gentle gay man has carved a swathe of respect and admiration throughout his country, something which perchance amazed even he, not to mention the conservative few of his remote home-town where he learned from the schoolyard that he was a “Ching Chong Chinaman”. His older brother confirmed that this was indeed so, and he had to “get used to it”.
Yang, now celebrating 80 years of life, tells of his childhood movement to the big smoke, the worst time of his life at high school in Cairns, of his wonderful Aunt Bessie and the uncle who was murdered. Of his discovery of the camera as the passport to social inclusion in the years which followed. Therein was the discovery of his own homosexuality and the gay world of Sydney, the homoerotic visages of lifesavers and Bondi Beach, the fun gay saunas and of Sydney’s drag world and the evolution of the Mardi Gras. He snapped it all.
As he did here. Many Adelaideans will recall William Yang's presence creating an on-the-spot photo record in Adelaide for lively Arts Festivals of the 80s - which sadly he did not mention. What he did cover, however, was the raucous self-identification of the Sydney gay scene back in the day. He also was part of the boho cultural world of Martin Sharpe, in whose affluent domicile he lived and worked for years. He had a darkroom at Sharp's place. He recorded everyone on film, mostly black and white. Photographing people became a raison d’etre and showing the beauty of the young male form.
He adopted Taoism and went to China where he finally felt a sense of second home, despite never having mastered the language.
He had a vibrant artistic circle—among them Brett Whiteley, Jenny Kee and the out-there chic folk. And he photographed them.
He was there for the gruelling passage to death of a dear one during the AIDS epidemic. He learned of the grace of death.
He studied himself, as well as others, and a series of self-portraits track this sense of self—sometimes in the vast dry inland, and finally, arms outstretched beneath a stormy seascape sky.
It has been an interesting life with substance enough to fill a series of photo diary performances, a genre he may call his own. Not everyone is gratified by homoerotic portraiture, but no one any longer finds it surprising.
This particular Australian gay man has quietly delivered it as a form of human essence with images profound, incidental and exuberant.
As his works displayed on the screen in the Town Hall, Ensemble Lumen played an array of extremely agreeable compositions by Elena Kats-Chernin. They complemented and oft highlighted the images, evoking moods and sometimes a sense of place. Periodic percussive use of coconut shells imparted a lovely light quasi-Oriental touch. In itself the music was an engrossing pleasure very interestingly enhanced by the Auslan interpreters who translated not only Yang’s words but the spirit and tempo of the music.
And so it was, a sentimental voyage for Oz Asia from a beloved artist, an Asian Aussie, perchance the apotheosis of the festival itself.
Samela Harris
When: 31 Oct
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Therry Dramatic Society. Arts Theatre. 30 Oct 2025
What a pleasure to see a comic actress really hitting her straps in her prime.
Helen Geoffreys has always enjoyed a respected reputation for reliable quality performances across the boards of Adelaide theatre. She’s been nominated for and has won awards for her work - and if ever there was cause for her name to sparkle yet again it is in this performance as Ann, the banker's wife and hapless mother of the groom-to-be. This is her night.
The vehicle in which she does this rib-cracking bedazzlement is a really quaint confection from Britain’s actor/playwright Robin Hawden, creator of The Mating Game, Perfect Wedding, and Birthday Suite among other romantic comedies. It is not the greatest of his many plays but a piece of implausible fluff which makes a fun diversion here under the seasoned direction of Sue Wylie.
It portrays a snooty stockbroker-belt family whose weekend of wedding plans and family introductions turns into a folly of utter bemusement as the bride-to-be falls into a dither of impetuous indecision.
The wonderful Jess Corrie, fresh from a distinguishing performance in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf at Holden Street, shows sturdy versatility swinging into the character of the vacillating romantic lead. ’Tis a performance of quite stunned perplexity. Around her are the three adoring males led by Paul Pancillo who is a singularly dashing comic performer. Keep an eye out for him. Stephen Bills stands forever tall as manipulative Geoff while Tom Tassone as the outsider is as personable onstage as we have come to expect of him. From Pelican Productions and Deadset Theatre comes the fresh face and promising presence of Laura Lines who has excelled in one of those legendary last-minute performances replacing an ill cast-member. And thus does the diligent cast of six thrive on a really terrific Don Oswald affluenza set under the perceptive lighting of Harry Ferguson.
The play itself would be pleasantly amusing were it not for Geoffreys as the hysterical and ever-blindsided English-counties mother and wedding planner. Her every reaction, her wild gesticulations and her impeccable timing delivers the play to scenes of glorious, chaotic hilarity. Applause, applause.
Samela Harris
When: 30 Oct to Nov 8
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com
Flying Penguin Productions. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 30 Oct 2025
American Song was written nine years ago. Its relevance remains as powerful now as then.
Justice. Peace. The ‘on track’ good life. The American Dream complete.
Andy (Renato Musolino) presents to us, an audience in the round, as a man halfway between sure and deeply unsure about these things.
There’s a foreboding sadness as he tells his life’s tale while building a rock wall, stone by stone. Something in life went wrong. Something we’re not up to speed with. Yet.
As Andy outlines his sense of moments of life significance; the wonderful wife, the career, the wonderful son, he’s also questioning their very validity.
Joanna Murray-Smith’s text is as delicate as it is boisterous in exploring and celebrating the ‘American Dream’ as it is dreamed and lived. The soap opera element is there, yet it is delivered with an insightfulness that is critically aware of the cracks within American culture.
Quentin Grant’s careful, graceful score, with hints of bird life, banjo, and guitar underscores the true depths of Andy’s musings on the pain within Murray-Smith’s text.
Beneath it all, there’s something different. Andy and Amy’s son Robbie is a powerful force in their lives. He’s there—but are they there with him?
That’s the slow burn powering Andy’s musings, desperately trying to create a safe place within himself. Good people, good children, get killed by guns. Why?
Who is at fault? What is it that causes it? What America is this?
Director David Mealor’s production is a masterpiece, letting Murray-Smith’s writing live and breathe at its own, sparse, deeply introspective, gentle pace. In Renato Musolino, is an actor who can, with patient precision and gentle calm, develop and grow Andy as a character who is as charming as he is hopeful, vain, remorseful and ultimately, lost.
Andy is without anchor. He is a mass of memory, introspection and awareness seeking new roots, new ‘answers’. He is America untethered from fantastical idealism, thrust into a dark and brutal reality that is playing out now in 2025.
Kathryn Sproul’s set is as deceptively simple as it is powerful. Her ‘wall’ works as a profound metaphor for insecurity bolstered by hope. Nic Mollison’s lighting perfectly supports Sproul’s careful, slowly darkening projection of gathering clouds, subtly guiding the audience to the point of dramatic shock.
David O’Brien
When: 24 Oct to 2 Nov
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: Sold Out
OzAsia Festival/The Human Expression (T.H.E) Dance Company. 23 Oct 2505
Heard the aphorism, ‘be like water.?
It perfectly sums up the delights and challenges of experiencing Director Kuik Swee Boon’s Searching Blue.
The work takes place throughout the spaces of Festival Plaza with a company of five dancers, a musician and Joel Manuel Fernandez’s portable amp playing much of the techno focused score.
This is a travelling piece, a guided journey, one with choices.
The audience arrives to a space near King William road. They find dancers in blue costume, arms, faces and legs covered with blue ochre chalk draped over benches, leaning against the building or stories poles.
The audience sits. Waits. Slowly, the work begins ever so gently as these dancers begin to awaken, stand, move. They’re accompanied by the sounds of solo human song and astonishing notes from a zither by Kent Lee.
A world within a world. One in which these dancers invite you take their hands, follow them. Walk or run. There’s a remarkable relationship unfolding between audience and dancers, indeed, an inner world is being created within the real one. That inner world directly challenges the one of sounds and people around us demanding its space,
so, like water, this moving production flows and ebbs in, around, and through the real world.
To take the dancers hands and follow them is to accept this new world of peace, seeking and wonderment.
The audience is constantly juggling this performance world and the real one. Perceptions of the two are extremely heightened by the fact we have accepted the dancer’s world. It’s moments of the dancers seeking something of each other, then offering their gift in warmth to us. From the King William Road corner, to Riverbannk, and across the footbridge.
At times, the troupe explodes into phrases of ensemble acrobatics and tableaux. The only moments they become like a conventional dance company in any sense of the term. That only makes ever more beguiling the mystery of choreography entangling audience members. It makes more profound the find and seek moments between dancers themselves.
Searching Blue is a remarkable waking dream experience. One that really makes you think about the realities you live in, physical, human, emotional, spiritual.
David O’Brien
When: 23 to 25 Oct
Where: Festival Plaza
Bookings: Closed