Carrie Kablean Archive

REVIEW: McGUFFIN PARK AT THE ENSEMBLE

This is a play about ego and ambition, ignorance and fear. It is a story of corruption, deception, ignorance and fear. But also, friendships. And there are jokes, too. These aren’t my words – they are spoken by the actor Jamie Oxenbould …

REVIEW: UNCLE VANYA AT THE ENSEMBLE, KIRRIBILLI

What a lively and sparkling adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya this is. Joanna Murray-Smith has brought out the comedy in this tale of lives blighted by disillusionment and ennui without losing the melancholy underlying the tale. Her contemporary dialogue is so easy …
Robert Menzies as Lear. Photo: Brett Boardman

REVIEW: KING LEAR AT THE NEILSON NUTSHELL

  An epic play and an epic performance from Robert Menzies as the cantankerous, incredulous and increasingly befuddled old monarch who loses his grip on his mind as he gives away his kingdom. The play was first performed in 1606, in the …

REVIEW: MASTERCLASS AT THE ENSEMBLE, KIRRIBILLI

Billed as an ‘explosive homage to legendary opera singer Maria Callas’, Terrence McNally’s 1995 opera play opens with Lucia Mastrontone (in the principal role) conducting a masterclass in New York’s Juillard School of the Arts. Her Callas, now past her prime as …

REVIEW: CHICAGO AT THE CAPITOL THEATRE

All that jazz, indeed, and so much more besides. This Chicago delivers on every level – singing, dancing, choreography, characterisation, music. It’s all fabulous and top notch. The opening number – with a gloriously sultry Zöe Ventura as Velma heading the female …