Carrie Kablean Archive

Slick, professional, baffling, clever, gasp-inducing and all-round top-rate entertainment. The Illusionists is all this more, and even cynics can’t help wondering, “How do they do that?” “Direct from Broadway” says the publicity, but this is a show that looks like it comes …

Poor Annie! The only one of the six characters in the Norman Conquests for whom I can feel any lasting sympathy. I left Round and Round the Garden, hoping she would not have to make do with that man! But to go …

No doubt about it, Australian politics is the gift that keeps on giving, and the creators of the  Déjà Revue, penned by the ever-acerbic and clever duo of Jonathan Biggins and Drew Forsythe, does not disappoint. So far, it never has. This …

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 …