Disney Theatre Group. Festival Theatre. 10 May 2025
Joy.
There it is! A one-word review.
Perhaps one could add bliss, fulfilment, laughter and awe.
And, finally, the name Disney.
Especially in this era of austerity and insecurity, we are blessed to have a brilliant Australian arm of Disney touring a blockbuster musical of such mighty calibre.
This veteran critic is unashamed to deliver a hands down rave review of its 2025 production of Beauty and the Beast.
It features no big familiar national stars, just a really discerning Australian casting. The name of Shubshri Kandia has yet to be a drawcard from the marquee.
And here she is, strong and charming in the role of Belle, the village beauty who falls into the dark fairytale world of the angry prince cursed into the shape of a beast to live in a grim castle in the midst of the wolf-scary woods.
The original tale is ancient and French, written in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and rewritten by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 . It was the Disney team who brought Belle into the contemporary light, and with a stage book from screenwriter Linda Woolverton and music from the great Alan Menken, re-envisaged Belle’s manifestation of beauty as also including an inner quality of learning and strength. Hence, today’s Belle is a voracious bookworm, and her ideal world is not jewels and wedding rings but a library and a compassionate relationship.
We now see this Disney delivery of the fantasy fairy tale as jolly good surrealism with the colourful classic Dali-esque dream concepts, as the clock dances with the candelabra and the dear old teapot wheels her teacup son, Chip, around on a tea trolly.
Fertile imagination thrives forever as do the universal battles of good versus evil.
Disney brings them to life yet again with good old Tim Rice’s lyrics and a cream of talented Disney creatives enabling top production values. Every incarnation of this work is just that bit smarter and more bedazzling than the last with the ongoing developments in stage technology: clever illusions; astounding lighting; not so much stage sets as stage worlds; and oh, the flowers.
Hence, the effusion of adjectives which come to mind as one beholds this show.
Entertainment at its best. Quality and style in every step. Oh, the costumes. Oh, the choreography. Oh, the brilliant Busby Berkley dance scene. The stuff of visual swoons.
Of course, Alan Menken’s music swirls from the skilful orchestra, loud but never overwhelming. Always balanced so the voices ring clear.
Trained voices, great hoofers - Rohan Browne is a delicious Lumiere, Gareth Jacobs is comic delight as Cogsworth, the clock. There’s Jayde Westaby, Alana Tranter, Rodney Dobson, gorgeous Hayley Martin, lithe Adam de Martino, young Jared Bicketron as Chip and, of course, tenor Brendan Xavier beneath the hair and horns of The Beast.
Not to be forgotten, he who brings the house down to whoops of delirious acclaim as the hilariously horrible Gaston, is one Jackson Head.
Tickets are not cheap but selling out fast as the word spreads that this show is super special.
Samela Harris
When: 10 May to 6 Jul
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
State Opera South Australia. Festival Theatre. 8 May 2025
Flight is playing for only three performances and finishes Saturday 10 May 2025. If you are an opera die-hard or simply opera-curious, you’ll want to see this. It is strikingly staged, is acted with style, and is sung beautifully. It is genuinely funny, with the audience frequently laughing out loud, it has moments of heart-rending poignancy, and it is provocative at times. It’s the full deal!
Flight, with music by Jonathan Dove and libretto by April de Angelis, is a comic opera set in an airport, where a group of stranded travellers – including a diplomat and his heavily pregnant wife, a couple reigniting their romance, a mature lady about to meet her fiancé for the first time, and a refugee stranded without papers – face flight delays because of storms, resulting in them having to sleep overnight at the departure gate. As they reveal personal secrets and confront emotional baggage, the opera blends humour and pathos. De Angelis’ libretto is beautifully constructed with frequent and clever rhyming, and concision. Director Stephen Barlow uses his cast beautifully as he gets them to extract every ounce of meaning from every sentence: words are prompts for how the cast use and move around the stage. Henry Choo as Bill and Samuel Dale Johnson as The Steward are especially effective in their stagecraft, and they excel in everything they sing: clarity and musicality abound.
The mysterious refugee, inspired by the true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian refugee who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal 1 in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 26 August 1988 until July 2006 when he was hospitalized, becomes a symbol of human displacement which continues to be tragically topical in today’s world. Flight explores themes of compassion, transformation, and the shared humanity beneath superficial differences.
Dove’s music is catchy and fun, modern and unpredictable, which often lulls the listener into experiencing the passage of time more slowly and amplifies the gravity of the thematic material. It is full of surprising orchestrations, and the use of percussion is a highlight.
Counter-tenor James Laing plays The Refugee with vulnerability and grace. His aria Dawn, still darkness… deep in Act 3 highlights the pain of statelessness. It’s a high point of the performance. Dove’s decision to score the role as a countertenor rather than a tenor or baritone is inspired: the poignancy of The Refugee’s plight is heightened.
Anna Voshege sings The Controller and her gorgeous coloratura soprano voice rides high above the stage, literally! Voshege gives the character control, authority and compassion, but evokes isolation. Her obvious concern for The Refugee, especially towards the end of the opera, is quite affecting.
Nina Korbe plays Tina, Bill’s partner. Korbe gives her both coquettishness and sass, and we are in no doubt who really wears the pants in the relationship. Cherie Boogaart plays The Older Woman and excels in giving her an air of mystery as well as naivety. Boogaart knows when she has humorous lyrics, and extracts every laugh possible.
Ashlyn Tymms plays The Stewardess, and frequently steals the show with the antics she gets up to with her fellow Steward (Samuel Dale Johnson). Their practised smiles are a hit, and the ‘elevator scene’ is sufficiently raunchy for the show to almost merit a rating!
Jeremy Tatchell has a smaller role as the Diplomat, but he sings and acts it fabulously. His tessitura is a perfect fit for Dove’s music. Fiona McArdle plays his pregnant wife, and she is superb. This is possibly the best thing that McArdle has done. Like Tatchell, the music fits her voice like a stylish glove, and her acting is first rate.
And then there is Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who plays The Immigration Officer. His impressive bass baritone voice fills the auditorium and immediately conveys authority. His diction is perfect, and his character demands respect. As Voshege does for The Controller, Rhodes also gives The Immigration Officer a wide streak of overt humanity, and we all wish that in today’s troubled world border force officers were also able to exercise compassion and discretion as does The Immigration Officer.
Director Barlow also uses some local actors as additional travellers, and he gives each of them distinct (and humorous) traits. It’s a nice touch.
Andrew Riley’s design is imposing but straightforward. It’s perfectly clear that we are located in an airport departure lounge replete with sliding doors leading to departure gates, a TV screen showing flight statuses, bench seats that are clearly uncomfortable, as they are in real airports, and the rear wall is used as giant projection screen upon which simple but effective images are projected to depict planes arriving, storms and the like.
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra sounded fabulous under the baton of conductor Charlotte Corderoy. There a few minor issues with principal singers being almost overshadowed by the orchestra early in act 1, but this was soon resolved.
This production of Flight originates from Scottish Opera, and is a reimagined version of the one performed at Opera Holland park in 2015. This international collaboration with State Opera South Australia strongly underlines SOSA artistic director Dane Lam’s vison of SOSA being part of a creative ecosystem of “opera without borders”.
Remember, this fabulous production closes this weekend! Don’t delay in getting your tickets. It really is fun!
Kym Clayton
When: 8 to 10 May
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
Garry Marshall & Lowell Ganz. Galleon Theatre Group Inc. Domain Theatre. 2 May 2025
Thank goodness for Community Theatre of the standard of Wrong Turn at Lungfish!
When Arts Minister Andrea Michaels seemed affronted during a recent ABC 891 Radio interview by the suggestion $80 million over a decade might not be a sufficient budget to support the Arts- all the Arts- she may have been oblivious to the dire state of professional theatre in South Australia. Dire because a city the size of Adelaide supports so few professional productions. Our dear Arts Minister needs to get out to see so called amateur work like this to appreciate the scope that exists to develop the professional space in this State!
Wrong Turn at Lungfish, showcases what lives in that space!
There’s nothing like the prospect of mortality to provoke introspection and prompt great belly laughs! Sublime writing by Gary Marshall and Lowell Ganz, somewhat reminiscent of Niel Simon in its often brusque, sharp wit, is a gift this Galleon Theatre Group ensemble does not squander
Tony Busch, Dora Stamos and Tianna Cooper are simply outstanding, while Wade Cook shows promise. But I am ahead of myself!
A bold choice for a small community theatre group, Wrong Turn at Lungfish explores the many complexities of being human and connecting with others, sometimes completely unexpectedly, when we stumble upon our shared humanity through vulnerability.
Peter Ravenswaal (Peter Busch), an embittered former Dean of a college, is highly literate, blind and struggling to come to terms with the illness that will eventually see to his demise. Young New York Italian, Anita Meredino (Dora Stamos), probably from “Hell’s Kitchen” given Stamos’ superb accent, is barely literate but gifted with intuitive intelligence by birth and street smarts by necessity. Volunteering for a reading-for-the-blind organization brings Anita into Ravenswaal’s embittered orbit weekly, while an unfortunate student Nurse (Tianna Cooper) must suffer Ravenswaal’s grief driven tantrums and tirades because no one else will. Having lost his wife but a year earlier, Ravenswaal is immersed in grief for her and his own impending mortality. Hearsay brings us to know Dora’s boyfriend Dominic (Wade Cook), something of a ne’er do well, and to suspect all is not as it seems.
Marshall and Ganz’s beautifully drawn cocktail of character dynamics is an ensemble actor’s dream, one this trio of capable actors make the most of. Ravenswaal variously cajoles, taunts, rejects and educates Anita as he demands she read Schappenhaur, Keats, and Elliot, among others, while his love for Beethoven both punctuates and underscores his intellectual and emotional acuity. Ravenswaal’s observation that humanity made a “wrong turn at Lungfish” foreshadows what is to come. Anita counters with increasingly clever wit and disarming honesty as the barriers between these unlikely, yet entirely believable, friends collapses.
Act One crackles with the energy of this battle of wits and vulnerabilities as Ravenswaal and Anita find mutual respect and fondness. Cooper is masterful in her rendition of the harried Nurse, her insights into the character reflected in the rollercoaster of her interactions with Ravenswaal.
Act Two sees the appearance of Dominic, a thug of a man for all the usual cliched reasons; somehow Marshall and Ganz’s script keeps him on the better side of stereotype. Wade Cook, a musical theatre performer tackling his first stage show, gives the character a good crack but doesn’t quite find the depth of Dominic implicit in the text. To be fair, Cook is contending with an entrance halfway through a play with a well-established rhythm and the stella performances of his cast mates. It’s a tough gig matching such energy late in the piece. However, Cook does well to convey the brutishness Dominic brings to what is more an arrangement with Dora than a relationship; unfortunately, Dora sees it as the latter. An element of the elegance of the writing is how Dora’s doubts, which Ravenswaal intuits, are laced through the fabric of the text.
T.S.Elliott’s The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock provides a poignantly beautiful and moving bookend to this superb production.
Set design by director Rosie Aust, Galleon Theatre President Kym Clayton, and Michael Ralph is best summarized as eminently award worthy. Trish Winfield’s Lighting Design, Warren McKenzie’s (Galleon’s VP) Sound Design and Mary Cummins great costume design each and collectively support this great production well.
A superb example of community theatre at its best, Wrong Turn at Lungfish, is yet another production I’ve reviewed featuring tertiary trained actors, something I would ask our Minister for the Arts to reflect on when spruiking Arts budgets. Where are the professional opportunities for such actors in South Australia?
Thankfully companies like Galleon, The Rep and Northern Light are providing some.
Wrong Turn at Lungfish, Go! See it!
When: 2 to 10 May
Where: Domain Theatre
Bookings: galleon.org.au
Editors Note: Kym Clayton, on set design in this production, is both Galleon Theatre Company’s President, a member of the Adelaide Critics Circle Incorporated, and a writer and critic for The Barefoot Review.
Sharr White. The Adelaide Repertory Theatre. The Arts Theatre. 1 May 2025
Dementia. The word is variously spoken in suppressed tones, with an edge of fear, with grave sympathy, or as nasty disparagement. None of us want it. Many of us have experienced it as a third party. It is the shadowy lived experience for some. Some of us may prefer death! It’s unnerving to note that, with over one hundred variants, dementia is the major cause of death of women in Australia today!
To find a non-scientific forum through which to comprehend dementia, to bear witness as it takes hold of a well-trained, brilliant mind through well-crafted theatre… Sharr White’s inventive script, first staged Off Broadway in 2011, compels us to bear witness to the unravelling life of fifty-two-year-old, brilliant neurological researcher Julia Smithton (Robyn Brookes), alongside oncologist husband, Dr Ian Smithton (Scott Nell). Herein lies a beautiful paradox that, in the hands of a lesser playwright, could descend into mawkish pathos. However, White’s cleverly structured script ensures we witness Juliana’s interactions and recollections in such a way as to never be certain as to where the truth lies; through structure we descend into the confusion of one afflicted by dementia. The scripts non-linear, often jarring narrative immerses us in that confusion.
This, sometimes-erratic, rhythm and pace, embedded in White’s precise, often witty, dialogue is capably managed by the small ensemble under the directorial guidance of veteran performer and director David Sinclair. Nuanced and attentive to the portrayal of characters invested personally or clinically in Julia’s increasingly disturbing behaviours, Sinclair dedicates this show to his sister-in-law who succumbed to this insidious disease, aged 60. His observations of a disease that “attacks the very essence of who we are and who we once were” are evident in his sensitive direction.
Robyn Brookes’ portrayal of Julia is compelling to watch. Brookes’ timing is immaculate, and her ability to pivot between apparent lucidity, narration, child-like vulnerability and the frustrated rage of diminishing comprehension is breathtaking. Scott Nell carries himself well in, arguably, the most difficult role in the play, Julia’s oncologist husband. Nell must navigate his way through the emotional roller coaster of the life partner of a dementia sufferer who also happens to be an advanced medical professional. I well recall the difficulty my own stepfather, a scientist, experienced when coming to terms with my mother’s terminal cancer when in her late forties; the response of the partner is complex and fraught, and Nell conveys this very effectively. I was impressed by Tegan Gully-Crispe as Woman, a role requiring her to play a neuropsychiatrist, Julia’s daughter Lauren, and the unsuspecting new owner of “the other place”, Julia’s family’s Cape Cod escape. Gully-Crispe is utterly convincing across these roles. Bendan Cooney as Man is similarly capable as Richard, Julia’s former research partner, and Lauren’s older lover, and Nurse. However, we must wonder whether any of the characters portrayed through Man and Woman are real, or simply dementia induced delusions.
David Sinclair’s superb minimalist set’s sharp angles emphasize a sense of entrapment, while Richard Parkhill’s lighting cleverly underscores Julia’s shifting thought patterns.
The Arts Theatre and Adelaide Rep are embarking on ambitious and exciting adventures, the former with a much-needed building program for the much-loved sixty-two-year-old building, the latter with an injection of contemporary theatre that, I hope, will find discerning audiences of all ages. With David Sinclair driving much of this, the only way is forward and up! I look forward to the upcoming musical, Come From Away, another foray into the contemporary canon.
As a side note, if you’re under forty, get off your butt, get off Netflix, and get out to see great theatre in places in Adelaide, like the Arts Theatre! The Fringe is not the only time to do this!
The Adelaide Rep’s The Other Place is an excellent production exploring a condition disturbing close to all of us.
Go! See it!
John Doherty
When: 24 Apr to 3 May
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: Closed
Festival Fleurieu. Butterfly Theatre. The Olives, Yankalilla. 26 Apr 2025
Rain, hail or shine, the show must go on. And so it did at The Olives for the Festival Fleurieu.
It was not hail and, indeed, it was only misty rain beneath an occasional rainbow.
But, it was suddenly cruelly cold.
Wise audience members, advised to bring chairs and picnic blankets for this outdoor performance of spirited Shakespearean snippets, swiftly rugged up in an ubiquity of puffer jackets and knee rugs and cosily watched sweet Ophelia in a flimsy nightie listing her death bouquet: “There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that's for thoughts…” And, all around, were living flowers amid the glory of rosebeds and herbaceous borders at The Olives; the perfect setting under imperfect weather. Damn.
The Butterfly Theatre players, however, showed no goosebumps let alone faint hearts.
They were troupers of the old theatrical tradition. Bare arms and bare feet were dressed by brave hearts and strong voices.
Their stage was a sunken lawn with some hay bales and a small marquee for the musicians with their Elizabethan stringed instruments. The audience was arrayed in “stalls” on the grass with some looking down from a geranium-lined "dress circle”.
Thence, they also could meditate upon the windbreak provided by gracious old olive trees planted in 1860. The Olives is a precious piece of South Australia’s listed heritage and its gardens are a work of art.
The Festival production, directed by Tony Knight, was something of a lyrical smorgasborg: sonnets, songs, and exerpts from the Bard’s plays. Titania was there and Bottom, Viola and Juliet, Rosaline and Kate… Shakespeare’s words of love from many sources delivered by sterling performers and musicians: Bronwyn Ruciak, Callum Logan, Leah Lowe, David Daradan, Sophie Livingston-Pearce, James Logan, Matthew Lykos, and Jamie Lynn Webster.
Many are the jokes about the indestructibility of actors and their reputation as such is not for nothing. Butterfly is fragile only in name. It shows its colours as a tough troupe one may even dub as daring plein-air professionals. Applause.
Samela Harris
When: 26 Apr
Where: The Olives
Bookings: Closed