Theatre Archive

Introduced as a celebration of return to live theatre, with an opening song and dance number of grinning ‘amateur’ actors decked out in betasselled gold lamé, it’s clear that The Boomkak Panto is not taking itself too seriously. Or is it? Part …

The Woman in Black is back, risen from lockdown to once more spirit around the Ensemble stage. It can be hard to make melodrama work on stage but Jamie Oxenbould and Garth Holcombe pull us right into this Edwardian-era ghost story. From …

One of the opening scenes of Come From Away invites us to wonder about enduring 28 hours stuck on a plane, on the tarmac, on an unscheduled stop and with no adequate explanation for the compulsory and confined stopover. That’s what happened …

  Belinda Giblin’s relentlessly optimistic Winnie was a joy to behold and will remain a vivid memory.  I have not seen a better production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, directed here by Craig Baldwin. From the moment the lights go up and …

American playwright Bess Wohl’s play has the audience giggling before anyone on stage has said anything. Minutes pass as Bill and Nancy, who we will soon learn have been married for 50 years, perform a wordless pas de deux as they lay …

For a feel-good night out, it will be hard to go past Come From Away, 80 minutes of spectacular musical theatre that distils a number of heart-warming true stories that evolved in the aftermath of a horrific event. It’s not 9/11 The …

Director Eamon Flack has set his production in a country called Rushia. Playing with The Cherry Orchard’s central theme of change, the actors on this stage are in the ‘now’, which he says could span any time from 100 years ago to …

These two one act plays are linked by their examination of death and the road to dying. Yielding is first. It’s a two-hander, performed by Tricia Youlden and Emma Dalton, and it is unremittingly bleak, which may have been writer Emma Workman’s …

First performed in 1995, Honour has become an Australian classic and this version, with a few tweaks to acknowledge Twitter and other forms of social media, is sharp and immediate. The catastrophe at its heart is commonplace. As playwright Joanna Murray-Smith says, …

  Compelling, moving and a visual delight, Claudel is the tragic story of a woman whose ambition to excel as a sculptor was cut short, oppressed by disapproving family and the strong hand of the patriarchy. It is written and directed by Wendy Beckett …