A Promenade of Shorts - Season 3

Red Phoenix Theatre Co. Goodwood Theatre. 16 Jan 2026

The ultimate feast for greedy theatre fiends. Red Phoenix crams nine plays into one night at the theatre.

They are short plays, some very short. They are very different. And they are delivered with professional flourish by a mass of very fine actors and directors plus techs and backstage support. The full catastrophe as Zorba might say.

But in the nicest way.

This production is season three, and it is a rip roarer. Audiences are colour-tagged in three groups, so they swap venue to venue in the theatre, sitting in each venue for three plays. Each group has a characterful minder, so the pack movements are slick and there’s the bar for stops betwixt and between. This promenade formula was devised by Red Phoenix when Covid restricted audience numbers. It was a way to fill the house and make a buck without crowding. The groups can be bigger these days.

In the Main Theatre, the night begins with In Farce, by Steven Bucko, a quaint confection based on the endless opening and closing doors of classic farce theatre. Directed by Norm Caddick it is a delicious folly, albeit it needs a bit of a hurry-up. Chilled Wine by Dorothy Lambert and directed by Alicia Zorkovic is the least pithy of all the plays but works as an attenuated revue skit. Indeed, the following play, Go to the Light by Laurie Allen is also a big skit. This one, however, is as pithy as can be as a diabolical send-up of Facebook addiction. Several of the plays are very skit-like and take one back to the long-lost days of revue. A Bottle for a Special Occasion by William Kovacsik is tragic comic with a tinge of romance, as is When I Fall in Love It Will Be by Susan Middaugh. It centres on the tragedy of dementia; melancholy charm and lovely performances therein from Adrian Barnes and Lisa Lanzi. This work is under Libby Drake’s direction and if there’s a director’s competition in the production, she wins outright with imagination and exuberance, bringing the cast of Jan Probst’s Road Trip back and back to The Studio stage as an unruly band of stagehands changing sets. They throw out funny memes and create delicious chaos. As for Road Trip, what a clever little work of physical comedy with gorgeous characters.  On Queue by Morey Norkin and James McLindon’s Choices are part of Hayley Horton’s directorial three and perhaps the trickiest and least pithy, despite valiant performance. These are very fine actors, a hearty reminder of the quality of stage acting which surrounds us in this city. Up there at the top are Michael Eustice and Sharon Malujlo who perform a period costume piece by Rob Taylor called Mrs Thrale Lays On…Tea! It is an outrageous and ingenuous gem and wild actors’ exercise.  It features also one of those jewels of bit part excellence from Zoe Battersby as the maid. 

There is too much to praise and too many names. Rounds of applause to Lyn Wilson, Lindsay Dunn, Joanne St Clair, Laura Lines and Bec Kemp, Cheryl Douglas, Peta Shannon, Jo Coventry, Adam Tuominen, Matt Chapman, Jack Robins, Jethro Pidd, Stuart Pearce, Jess Corrie, Laura Tregloan, Monika Lapka…and, and, and…

Include there Richard Parkhill, Will Gee and all the corollary workers. 

Red Phoenix continues to be a classy company.

Samela Harris

When: 15 to 24 Jan

Where: Goodwood Theatre

Bookings: trybooking.com

The 60 Four Christmas Proms

Ben Francis. Adelaide Town Hall. 7 Dec 2025

It is impossible not to rave about this group. 

The 60 Four is/was/will be one of the star turns of this country.

Its Christmas Proms special had the crowds massed and jammed really early at the Adelaide Town Hall. Come on down every Baby Boomer in town. 

And the four Adelaide boys, fresh home from intensive touring—five countries and several states in the last month, cruise ships, concerts, you name it—gave the crowds just what they craved. It was yet another five-star, high-energy two hours of good spirit. Christmas spirit in this case. They jazzed up all manner of Christmas songs but scratched the old fans’ itch with some Frankie Valli and Beachboys, even Beatles old hits. And the crowd tapped feet, clapped along and whooped for more.

The secret to The 60 Four’s ever-growing popularity is not just pure talent but, significantly, consistency of high discipline. Indeed, these one-time school mates have honed their act with immense professional discipline. They are rehearsed to perfection. 

Their manager is Ben Francis, of the wild falsetto, and he has had the business nous to make the boys into hot property.

And, the energy never lets up.  They give, give, give. They work, work, work. They just get better, better, best.

It is not just the vocals of Jack Conroy, Lachlan Williams, Finnigen Green and Ben Francis but also it is the slick choreography and their flawless co-ordination as a group.

They really know how to “sell” a song. And, how to present as a quartet while also delivering an endearing sense of who is who. Together in identical stage outfits they are “the four” but through solos and chats, they are likeable individuals and one feels their friendship. Cheeky, fun asides pass between them. A warm intimacy is conveyed.

Of course, their demographic is interesting. Their fan base is grey-haired. The young in the audience were largely grandchildren. And, how deliciously The 60 Four merch reflects their understanding of this. Fabulous shirts may have flown off the merch table, but not as fast as the tea towels.  Yes, tea towels are star souvenirs and way more useful than t-shirts when you think about it. Good quality, too. We bought one of everything. Oh, and the Christmas special was 2026 calendars.

Ben Francis has created a brand and these spectaculars of The 60 Four are not the only goodie on the menu. His Elton John tribute show was a wow. There are more fan thrills to come on the entrepreneurial front. 

He announced their Fringe program, too, once more, spreading the cheer around from Fringe core in the parklands to the Shedley and Hopgood.

Oh, and one more thing.

The boys are all grown up. They are men now. a harmony of wonderful, brilliant, dazzling men.

Samela Harris

When: 7 Dec

Where: Adelaide Town Hall

Bookings: Closed

Book now for their Fringe shows: adelaidefringe.com.au

Harvey

Peter Goërs/Holden Street Theatres. 21 Nov 2025

Mary Chase’s Harvey is better known for the 1950s film adaptation of the play starring James Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd.

It’s fondly remembered for its impeccable comedy involving a delightfully genteel gentleman and invisible best friend Harvey, a six-foot rabbit with whom he travels the bars of New York making friends everywhere.

This greatly displeases his sister and niece with whom he resides, given his reputation may harm his niece’s marriage prospects, not to mention the struggle of coping with an invisible guest for whom a place at table must always be set.

His sister decides, in agreement with her daughter, that shipping Elwood off to a Sanitarium for the insane, then having power of attorney to sell the house Elwood actually owns, will solve everything,

No. It does not play out that way.

Elwood (Peter Goërs) outsmarts everyone. He drifts in and out of snares, accompanied by Harvey, happily dispensing compliments and kindness wherever he goes. Instead, it’s his sister Veta (Rebecca Kemp) committed to the Sanitarium by mistake. After his escape, his niece, Myrtle May’s (Dora Stamos) putting the house on the market comes unstuck. Sanitarium head psychiatrist Doctor Chumley (Ron Hoenig) has everything he knows professionally, completely challenged, alongside his new assistant, Doctor Sanderson (Christopher Cordeaux.)

Harvey is a comedy of errors as much it is a sweet reflection on what really matters in life, being oneself, making the best of relations with others.

Director Rosie Aust’s production goes for a performance stye close to the era of the play’s origins. Working to highlight absurdities and physical comedy eliciting a happy go lucky popcorn feel to the production.

This partly works, but overall has a cookie cutter feel to it, limiting what the ensemble can bring to their characters. They work at it though.

Most successful at getting beyond this constraint is Goërs, whose Elwood P. Dowd is a delightful creation. Perfectly paced, wonderfully clever and completely wise and heart warming. His counterpart. Rebecca Kemp as sister Veta Louise Simmons, is a rich, completely earthy being at whom one can laugh and yet sympathise with simultaneously.

Dora Stamos as her daughter Myrtle May gives an outstanding, carefully measured comic performance you just have to love. Leighton Vogt goes for it as Sanatarium guard Wilson, the only silly hard arse in the show.

There are actors whose work suits that in context, namely Amanda James’ fabulous Mrs Chumley, Antoinette Cirocco’s perfect, romantic sweetheart Nurse Kelly and Christopher Cordeaux’s know-it-all, smart-arse Doctor Sanderson, along with Brian Wellington’s Judge Omar.

Overall, this is a satisfying production. However, allowing the cast greater freedom to find immediacy in their work, rather than over focusing on style might increase its pace and add gumption to the comedy given the length of the work.

David O’Brien

When: 4 to 22 Nov

Where: Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: Closed

The Glass Menagerie

The Odeon. State Theatre Company South Australia. 19 Nov 2025

The old is new again and yet it is still old. So it feels with State Theatre’s production of Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie.

It is wildly unconventional while holding the play's emotional integrity fiercely in place.

Pleasingly, it showcases yet again the remarkable versatility of the Odeon Theatre in Norwood which most recently was stripped bare to a multimedia hall for Oz Asia and now is reborn with a mega set of dense multi-level complexity reaching from the lighting rigs right to the toes of the front row.

The play itself is famously a “memory play”, being melancholy evocations of the playwright's family experiences. The principal character is Tom, Thomas having been Williams’ born first name. The characters of the overbearing and thwarted mother, Amanda, and the disabled lonely Laura bearing no little resemblance to his own family. It is even set in St Louis, wherein the playwright had lived. 

If ever there was a sublimely written and piquantly indelible play, this is it, considered by many to be a foundational work of American theatre.

Coincidentally, it was pipped for the 1945 Pulitzer by Mary Chase’s play Harvey, which is about to close in Adelaide after running to full houses at Holden Street Theatres.

Spookily, both plays are about a fading socialite mother desperate to find a match for her unmarried daughter.

The Glass Menagerie mother, Amanda Wingfield, is the more tragic by far. Hers is a character part coveted and relished by senior actresses and it is a little surprising to find that State director Shannon Rush has cast and bewigged a decidedly youthful-looking beauty, Ksenja Logos, in the role.  She is a brave choice, especially in the brittleness of her delivery.  Not for her the languid vowels of the American South. Then again, director Rush breaks all sorts of traditions in this production and allows that poor ambitious mother to return to her southern-belle persona almost caricatured as a painted doll with the arrival of the gentleman caller.

Mark Thompson’s mega set enables risks. It is a world of myriad moods, a depth of field of fire stairs creating a claustrophobic sense of crowded tenement living. There is a shadowy downstairs street wherein strangers lurk.  There is the fire-escape landing for smoking and moon-gazing, a huge door frame which speaks to the disappointment of the characters who go through it - down into their reliquary of southern grace which is Amanda’s world. The set also respects the early design concept of screens with an astounding painted drop bearing the image of the absent father, alongside an empty Trumpian gilded frame. Darkly transparent, the face drop becomes the characters’ path into their domestic world while the dining room dominates and is to deliver, with Gavin Norris’s artful lighting, one of several scenes of utter theatrical magic. There is yet another level dressed for the living room and yet another for Laura’s gramophone and, oh, yes, the glass menagerie itself which, many-stranded, hangs dreamily from aloft, occasionally illuminated. Hence, the action is layered upon a literal world and flawed reminiscence.  

There is a lot to take in. A lot to ponder. And yet therein remains the purity of Tennessee Williams’s first great hit play.

Poor Tom, who is both narrator and character in the story, is portrayed most perceptively as hen-pecked son and sweet brother by Laurence Boxhall; good accent, too.  Kathryn (Kitty) Adams makes the heart ache as poor Laura. She captures succinctly Laura’s vulnerability albeit, again, as a director’s choice one assumes, far from the club foot with which Laura is afflicted in many productions, she suffers but an occasional limp, not necessarily the same one. 

The Gentleman Caller is played by one Jono Darby. He is positively thrilling. The stage is alive with his presence. Marvellous voice. Light on his feet. Astute in emotional inflection. He is a “find” in the Adelaide theatre.

Jamie Hornsby has composed for this piece some theme music which with Andrew Howard’s sound, at first overstates itself but, as the play evolves, finds a level which then blends. Costumes are splendid, right down to Amanda’s seamed stockings.

As a whole this State Theatre production is imperfect and at the same time, really quite wondrous.

And Mark Thompson may take a bow.

Samela Harris 

When: 19 Nov to 7 Dec

Where: The Odeon

Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au