Carrie Kablean Archive

The marital hell that sustains Edgar and Alice is obvious even before the lights go up on Brian Thomson’s fabulously dark set. Their body language, the overturned table and chairs, the general air of gloom and decay are all there, and then …

Sarah Pierse has absolutely nailed the role of Miss Docker in this wonderful production of Patrick White’s A Cheery Soul directed by Kip Williams. As well as being a visual delight (thanks Elizabeth Gadsby and costume designer Alice Babidge), Williams has assembled …

I wondered how this trilogy would hold up in 2018, in the midst of #MeToo and changed sensibilities, but I am happy to report that Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners, in the very capable hands of director Mark Kilmurry and an exceedingly fine …

A group of blokes in dark suits sit around discussing art. They look ordinary enough. You might overhear them talking in a café. To varying degrees they have some knowledge, although it becomes clear they don’t like cubism, surrealism – all modern …

Playwright Melissa Reeves has taken the protagonist first imagined by Henrik Ibsen in his An Enemy of the People and turned his Dr Stockman into a her and placed her into the 21st century in a small town in Australia, in which …

Fast, funny, refreshing and poignant – Feather in the Web is all this and more. It’s also unpredictable, original and downright entertaining, and its cast of four are uniformly and individually fabulous. A black comedy that is both weird and wonderful, what …

The Merchant of Venice With standout performances in the key roles of Portia and Shylock, as well as those of Bassiano, Lorenzo and Jessica, this is a memorable Merchant of Venice and – as has proved normal with the three plays I …

What to make of Eva Peron? Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s bio musical of the former Argentine First Lady doesn’t answer the question (far too hard, would take far too long!) and lets the adulating crowds, the cynical narrator Che and …

In a world of ‘fake news’, rotating prime ministers and scandals of all kinds, Dario Fo’s 1969 comedy about corruption is as relevant as ever. Here, in the able hands of director Sarah Giles, it is presented as pure farce and is …

Life wasn’t meant to be easy, and there’s certainly a lot of unease in this tale. Two 19-year-olds, incapable of looking after themselves, have a baby. The authorities step in, led by a veteran social worker, and declare neglect (always a potentially …