Dancing at Lughnasa 

5 May

This is a fascinating play. It’s also an extremely odd one.

Five unmarried sisters live together in the fictional Irish town of Ballybegg. To a degree, the story is told from the perspective of the son of one of these women. Now an adult, Michael looks back on the events of the summer of 1936.

It’s been described as a memory play, but don’t conflate that with memoir. It’s semi-autobiographical; the playwright Brian Friel is not a Michael, nor did he grow up in a fictional town: the prefix is apt.

Dancing at Lughnasa plays at being memoir. But it isn’t. What’s going on?

I’m not being merely finicky. I suggested the story is told from the perspective of Michael to a degree. I use that phrase deliberately because, for large chunks of the action, Michael is either not present, nor could he have been witness to the scenes we’re shown. Michael grabs at the role of narrator, but somehow the story has already escaped him, has left him behind (….which hints at what I think the play is really about, or at least, what it invited me to think about.)

We’re obviously being asked to consider memory. Apart from Michael’s personal memories, we also get those of other characters. There’s Aunt Maggie’s memory of a teenage rivalry. There’s Uncle Jack’s memory of the day he left Ireland, and his memories of his time in Uganda, memories so recurrent it’s as though he’s yet to return. The past is the very stuff out of which we try to build the present.

Try. It’s not that easy. For, as well as memory, the play is also a meditation on nostalgia (or is a straight out example of that phenomenon.) And nostalgia is all longing and loss, the desire to make present what is absent. We want the past, but it has escaped us. Remember Michael’s narration.

And consider one of the driving dichotomies of the play: the tension between Irish Catholicism and the indigenous religion of Uganda. Uncle Jack is a priest, but it would seem that while ministering to the Ugandans he has gone native. This horrifies at least one of the sisters, and facilitates many of the play’s comic moments. You could assume we’re simply being asked to laugh at the prim rigidity of Catholicism, but it’s noteworthy that is the ceremonies of Africa that obsess Jack. Friel highlights that word by having Jack search for it: ceremonies. (And bubbling through the play are references to the ancient Gaelic festival Lughnasa and its related ceremonies.) This focus on ceremony is provocative, because ceremony is a close cousin of nostalgia. Like nostalgia, ceremony is the desire to make present what is absent. Ceremony is an attempt to conjure the spiritual. Performed in time and place, and often pedantic and commonplace, ceremony aims to make magic out of the mundane, to recast some spell, or regather some wonder. Like nostalgia, ceremony is an attempt to regain what is lost. (It’s notable that the only Catholic ceremony referred to in the play is the Mass, the heart of which is the Eucharist. And, according to the Gospel of Luke, Christ asked his disciples to “Do this in memory of me.” Even the supposedly Divine acknowledged the connection between ceremony and nostalgia – and predicted our need to somehow navigate loss.)

Am I overthinking all this?

Perhaps.

Some audience members might lean more into the play’s sentimentality and find an emotional richness. Others, like myself, will find themselves more thrilled by the play as created artefact. If its unusual nature sparks reflection, then that’s one of the many things it gifts the audience.

Isabella Milkovitsch’s production offers this gift.

There are some wonderful performances. Patrick Holman as Michael is splendidly wistful, entranced by the remembered moments while bewildered by the longer perspective. As Christine, his mother, Iris Simpson glows with youthful hope and promise, a portrait made all the more poignant by Michael’s knowledge of what’s to come. Megan Bennetts beautifully presents the exuberant mischief of Aunt Maggie. James Sugrue, as the disorientated Uncle Jack, magnificently encapsulates the baffled grasping at whatever might resist the inexorable current of time.

Paul Gilchrist

Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel

at New Theatre until 16 May

newtheatre.org.au

Image by Bob Seary

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3 Billion Seconds

1 May

This is part black comedy, part satire, and all fun.  

Directed by Dominique Purdue, the show is thrillingly fast-paced. Actors Izabella Louk and Victor Y Z Xu give wonderfully audacious, high-energy performances. (I’ll admit it took me time to attune to the piece’s theatrical language: at first, I was fearful of sensory overload.)

By British playwright Maud Dromgoole, 3 Billion Seconds tells the story of two population growth activists, Daisy and Michael. Acknowledging that one of the greatest challenges facing humankind is our exploding numbers, they dedicate their lives to raising awareness about the problem. And then they find they have a little problem of their own: Daisy is pregnant. How can they offset the impact of bringing a child into the world?

Their answer is what makes this black comedy.

The satirical element could be broken into two strands.

One is a poke at the dreadful arithmetic of consequentialism, that oddly reductive vision of ethics which (in its worst forms) assumes the difference between right and wrong can be calculated numerically. In the play, this is signified by a fixation on pie charts. Consequentialism’s vision of morality is based on outcomes. To most people, this might seem an entirely natural approach. After all, don’t we determine whether an action is right or wrong depending on its consequences? Trouble is, we don’t always know the consequences. (A radical critique, or a radical honesty, might suggest we never know the consequences. And certainly not in a way that can be expressed numerically.) It takes little imagination to see that an ethical philosophy that manifests both a whiff of epistemological arrogance and a weakness for calculation might only too easily mutate into a force for dehumanisation. The events of the play certainly suggest this – though not with little imagination, with glorious comic invention.

The other satirical strand targets anyone (everyone?) who puts their personal wants before the needs of the community. (And that community can be defined in ever widening circles.) The production’s final haunting image brilliantly encapsulates this threat. But juxtaposed with this image of menace are the closing lines of dialogue, which are a very human expression of a very human desire. In this refusal to be reductive, the piece attains dramatic excellence. To face the greatest of challenges – the threat to our planet, to our species, to all species – we will need all our best qualities, and that includes honesty.

Paul Gilchrist

3 Billion Seconds by Maud Dromgoole

presented by Blinking Light in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Co

at KXT on Broadway until 2 May

kingsxtheatre.com

Image by Phil Erbacher

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Gruesome Playgound Injuries

27 Apr

TAP Gallery is a Sydney treasure, a place truly dedicated to art. I was witness to so many beautiful pieces of theatre at the old TAP, when it was on Palmer Street. Well, it’s long moved to Riley Street, and there’s no micro-theatre anymore – but there’s still the potential for brilliant theatrical work to be done here.

Unorthodox Productions are currently presenting Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries.

It’s a 75 minute two-hander, an exploration of pain and its cure. In eight non-chronological scenes, the play covers a thirty year span in the relationship between Kayleen and Doug. These two are injured in so many ways, some of them physical.

It’s not really a narrative, or at least it doesn’t privilege narrative. It’s fun to try to guess the links between the scenes, but I don’t think that’s the point of the nonconventional structure. By not asking us to focus on the development of the relationship, it lifts it beyond time, and highlights the transcendent nature of love. The genius of the piece is that this spiritual transcendence is juxtaposed so clearly with the physical: what stronger reminder of human fragility and ephemerality can there be than injury? And the junction between these two spheres of Life – the miraculous place where the spiritual meets the physical – is beautifully evoked by the suggestion that wholeness may be gifted by a touch.

Director Brea Macey makes effective use of the simple space. Darya Miroshnikova and Chris Stamoulous give truly committed performances and are entirely present as they explore the complexity of the characters (though some variation in pace might bring out more of the script’s rich humour.)

I have to admit I find something deeply thrilling about productions like this. Find a space. Share Beauty and Truth. Don’t wait for permission. Sydney needs more of it.

Paul Gilchrist

Gruesome Playground Injuries by Rajiv Joseph

Presented by Unorthodox Productions

at Tap Gallery until May 3

Tickets www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1538915

Image by Simon Pearce

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The Breakup Variety Hour

24 Apr

At this years’ Sydney Comedy Festival, American performer Ariana and the Rose presents her concept album and one woman show.

Ariana presents her Six Steps of Breaking Up. So not really a variety hour; perhaps a playful parody of our determination to structure Life’s wildness. But I shouldn’t overstate the parody – though Ariana presents these steps with a cheekily exuberant humour, at heart they’re entirely valid pieces of advice, and the show as a whole has a (belly)aching truthfulness. Like a catch up with a caring, fun, and extremely talented friend.

I’ll mention two of Ariana’s steps. (I’ve forgotten which number steps they are.)

Anger. Readers of my site will know how I’ve bemoaned our culture’s current valorisation of rage. But Ariana gives it a sagacious twist. Anger at the person who dumped you allows you to let go, to dismiss what they might think of you, and to be comfortable with the possibility that you’re the bad guy in someone else’s story. And that way freedom lies…

Falling in love again with Life. Though romantic love is one of the great things in Life, it’s hardly the only great thing. Ariana wisely and wittily counsels that you go out and immerse yourself in all the wonders Life has to offer.

Overall, the piece is an exhilarating rejection of regret. Breaking up is painful, but it’s also a terrific opportunity to grow. And there’s nothing Pollyanna-esque about Ariana’s presentation of this vision: she’s fast-talking, sometimes filthy, and always funny.

And each step is accompanied by an original song. The songs are a neat and deliciously varied pop collection (so maybe a variety hour) and Ariana performs them with mesmerising verve.

Paul Gilchrist

The Breakup Variety Hour by Ariana and the Rose

At Enmore Theatre (the Whipbird Wine Bar) until 24 April

As part of the Sydney Comedy Festival

sydneycomedyfest.com.au

Image supplied

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Three Sisters

23 Apr

“With love to lead the way, I’ve found more clouds of gray / Than any Russian play could guarantee”

So go the lyrics of the Gershwin classic But Not for Me.

You can only assume it’s a reference to Chekhov.

The Russian playwright’s meditation on melancholy – and whether love (or work) is its cause or its cure – is also a classic.

Can you really claim to be educated in modern theatre if you haven’t seen Chekhov’s big four: The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters?

This production by Last Waltz gives you the opportunity to fulfil part of the course requirements with only a three hour commitment (including interval.)

The translation by Laurence Senelick retains the original setting, and the design team under director Clara Voda effectively evoke the world of pre-Revolutionary Russia.

Chekhov is rightfully famed for the truthfulness of his work. And this production is true to that – in a rather provocative way. Vocal performances sometimes push to a realism that repudiates any assumption that art is a finely crafted thing: sometimes actors are too soft or too loud or too giggly. (Life, though, is all these things.) Occasionally, dialogue seems ad libbed, which may be indicative of a complete immersion in the reality of the characters, or it might just be ad libbing.

These bold choices encouraged me to consider the value of the original play.  If we value Chekhov because he is truthful, it’s not because he presents an accurate representation of the human condition. It’s difficult to relate to these self-indulgent middle-class whingers. (Just go to Moscow, for God’s sake!) If we were ever meant to relate to their plight, then I suspect that time has passed (at least for me) and Chekhov can be safely dropped from the (fictitious & facetious) curriculum.  

But I don’t think representing the human condition is what Chekhov really does. Instead, he gives us human behaviour, warts and all. And that’s the gift of this production.

Paul Gilchrist

Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov (based on a translation by Laurence Senelick)

presented by Last Waltz Productions,

at the Old Fitz until May 9.

oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by Robert Miniter

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English

23 Apr

This is a beautiful production of a truly beautiful play.

It’s set in Iran, in a classroom in which English is taught as a foreign language.

The script won Sanaz Toossi the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and by presenting it, and doing so brilliantly under the direction of Craig Baldwin, Outhouse confirms itself as one of our most exciting and stimulating theatre companies.

Marjan insists her students speak only English in class. Pedagogically, this is probably a sensible decision – but it brings to the fore the challenges of learning a new language.

When not attempting English, the characters are imagined to speak in their native Farsi. For the purposes of the play, Farsi is represented by the actors’ natural spoken English, while the language they are attempting to learn is represented by English spoken with an Iranian accent. Dialect coach Linda Nicholls-Gidley deserves congratulations for the cast’s successful navigation of this neat trick. And neat trick it is – because it effectively highlights that behind every accent you might find clumsy, or difficult, or amusing, is a person of equal dignity to you: equally intelligent, equally articulate, equally human.

(Digression: Farsi is what native speakers call their language. For a long time, English speakers called it Persian. There are some Farsi speakers who would prefer that English speakers returned to using the word Persian – because it would make clear to them that the language referred to is a continuation of that used in one of the great literary cultures of the world. Think Hafez, Omar Khayyam, Rumi. In what follows, I’m going to quote Rumi several times, but that’s my pomposity, not the play’s. The play derives its authority not from pretentious claims to erudition, but from the more difficult commitment to honesty, and to the hilarious and oh-so-skilful use of the vernacular.)

By an accident of geopolitics, a fluke of technological disparity, and the evil of man, the majority of the world’s people now speak, as their native tongue, a language they’re told is of secondary value. The play explores this phenomenon with exceptional humour, poignancy and insight.

Eighteen year old Goli hopes English will allow her to reinvent herself, and Minerva Khodabande is splendid in the role, capturing with comic excellence the awkwardness and optimism of youth.

Speak a new language so that the world will be a new world. – Rumi

As the unexpectedly competent English speaker Omid, a charming Pedram Biazar presents the psychological challenges of being caught between two cultures, and the quiet presentation of this oh-so-common predicament fosters the air of truthfulness that pervades the entire production.   

Neveen Hanna as Roya powerfully evokes the ache of grief as a language difference divides her from her son. In one of the play’s many tear-inducing moments, she cries Why couldn’t you have given my granddaughter a name I could pronounce?

All language is a longing for home. – Rumi

Elham muses how different the world might have been if Cyrus the Great’s empire had survived and Farsi, instead of English, had become the lingua franca. Setareh Naghoni’s portrayal of Elham is marvellous: prickly, frustrated, resentful, but courageous in her determination to be loyal to who she is.

Nicole Chamoun as Marjan offers another wonderfully complex portrayal. She presents superbly the character’s pride in her bilingual ability and her commitment to sharing it, but threads through these qualities a strand of self-doubt, thin but thorny.

The scenes between Elham and Marjan are magic, and their gentle but firm refusal to tell us which character is correct is expressive of the sheer dramatic brilliance of this work.

Perhaps it’s through language we become who we are… or become anyone at all.

Or perhaps not. The play says nothing directly about the ineffable, the world beyond what can be spoken. But what work of literature can?

This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence overcomes me and I wonder why I ever thought to use language. – Rumi

And, regarding the play’s conclusion, the spoiler rule also sanctions silence. It must suffice to say that it’s extraordinary. It will be experienced in different ways by different audience members, but it left monolingual me, once again, thinking of Rumi.

Not the ones speaking the same language, but the ones sharing the same feeling understand each other.

And this play is a glorious invitation to empathy.

Paul Gilchrist

English by Sanaz Toossi

presented by Outhouse Theatre Co. & Seymour Centre,

at the Seymour Centre, until 2 May

seymourcentre.com

Image by Richard Farland

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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

10 Apr

Two moments of theatrical wonder:
The protagonist, Janina, encounters wild creatures. These creatures are portrayed by members of the ensemble. There’s no silly adornment to suggest their animal nature. The performers simply stand motionless, watchful, in a dignified silence.
At another point in the story, Janina dresses for a costume ball. She takes on the mask of an animal. While in this costume, she does not speak.
This is the emotional heart of director Eamon Flack’s inspiring adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk’s novel – the essential dignity of our silent cousins.


Set in modern day Poland, the story is a whodunnit, with the characters attempting to determine who is responsible for a series of murders. All the slain are hunters, and Janina asserts that it’s the animals seeking retribution. So, in addition to the whodunnit element, the piece also operates as a youdunnit, a gentle and forever entertaining invitation to consider our own treatment of animals.  


The glory of this production is the characterisation and the theatricality.


Pamela Rabe plays Janina, and as both narrator and protagonist through three hours of stage-time, it’s a monster role of deep humanity. Bewildered by other people and outraged at their cruelty, Rabe’s Janina is a superb mix of humour and heart. Janina complains she is dismissed as a batty old woman, and thrillingly the script and the performance leave open whether her complaint is justified. 


Staging is simple, but extraordinarily beautiful. There’s a revolve, a few small portable pieces evoking setting, and the trademark Belvoir style of rough magic: example, a snow storm is thrown from a bag held by an actor, a mini-leaf blower creates the flurry.


The work’s purpose is serious – the challenging of a complacent cruelty we tell ourselves is just plain reality. But the entire cast invest in a mischief that makes possible belief in change, a change our smaller natures would dismiss as miraculous. 

Paul Gilchrist

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead from the novel by Olga Tokarczuk
adapted by Eamon Flack

at Belvoir until May 10

belvoir.com.au

Image by Brett Boardman

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Eden

9 Apr

If you’ve passed through Australian drama, Australian literature, you know this place.

It’s a country town.

The townspeople are small, they are broken.

They have names like Killer and Runt.

The landscape is riven by a tension. On one side, the trivialities of human society: the servo, the takeaway shop. On the other side, the ferocious beauty of nature: the bush, the river, the sea.

In this place, you are an adolescent.

And, desperately, you need to leave.

These type of stories reflect the personal experience of some of us. But, for most of us, they function symbolically. They effectively express our deep dissatisfaction with modern Australia and its perception of what it is to be an adult, of what is a full human life.

I’ll admit, I often find these type of stories disappointing. It’s not that I haven’t felt the sense of being trapped they express, but I’m frustrated that they always seem to end right where I believe the story begins, at the escape. It’s as though the actual step into maturity is inconceivable, it’s representation impossible.

It’s as though this place seems to negate all alternatives.

But, with Eden, Kate Gaul not only shows she knows this place, she has understood it.

Gaul’s script tells the story of two teenage girls, trapped in this place. But her presentation pushes always to liberty and to openness.

Firstly, the voice. The girls tell their own story. Though there are moments of dramatic realism, the majority of the piece is direct address. We’re not served a purported factual picture; we’re spoken to by characters with agency, women in charge of their own narrative.

Secondly, the beautiful poetry. Much of this poetry is observational, in that Truth is the goal, rather than a reductive coherence. Of some pieces you can say This a beautiful gem, because it’s as though you can hold it up to the light, complete, and by turning it, and looking at it from different angles, you can see how the multiple parts fit together to create a single whole. Gaul’s rich poetry resists this; it’s not stone-solid, it’s fluid, like a moving body of water. (Example: the river that runs by the town is a motif that resists simple interpretation. Likewise, the title, Eden. If Paradise, is it irony? Or is this place the place of the Fall? Or is it where the story, all stories, must begin?)

Thirdly, the narrative. The town is initially established as a place of male misbehaviour and violence: a teen gang named the Mongrels marauds the streets; one of the girl’s fathers has left her mother for a younger woman; the other girl’s father is a wife-beater. But their escape? Honest admission: I didn’t understand the final fifth of the text, I didn’t understand what was happening. But what might lead to frustration with other pieces, is here a continuing invitation to openness. Freedom is that which does not slam shut.

Gaul directs her script magnificently. Simple staging forefronts the ever-fascinating language. Nate Edmondson’s soundscape powerfully underlines key moods and tonal changes (and, I suspect, could be listened to and enjoyed for its own sake.)

Actors Karrine Kanaan and Lara Lightfoot are splendid. They skilfully move between different characters, but it’s in the presentation of Gaul’s language that they particularly shine. This is poetry performed, rather than vernacular speech patterns imitated. This heightening is key. I suggested earlier Gaul not only knows this place, but understands it: it is a place of containment, of smallness, of perpetual reference to what-has-been rather than what-could-be. And if there can be an intimation of what follows the escape, it can’t be another tiny truth, but a flourishing – like this.  

Paul Gilchrist

Eden by Kate Gaul

presented by Siren Theatre Company

at The Substation, Qtopia, until 18 April

qtopia.sydney.com.au

Image by Natalia Ladyko  

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Femoid

9 Apr

Written by Iris Warren and directed by Izabella Day, this is a cry from the heart against sexual violence and misogyny.

It’s also oddly structured.

There are three strands.

One strand is a series of scenes of comic realism. We witness the small chat between three high school girls, played by Natasha Pearson, Roisin Wallace-Nash and Warren. It’s funny, beautifully performed and wonderfully truthful. Perhaps there’s a little too much talk about sex (and there is the obligatory condom-on-the-dildo PDHPE exercise) but all this is thematically driven. Apart from being great fun, these scenes emphasise the girls’ innocence.

Another of the strands is a series of scenes of heightened language in which two of the young women look back – on their girlhood, and on its terrible ending. There’s regret at the loss of youthful simplicity. There’s historical references to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon and to the 1989 Montreal massacre of women. There’s musings on Fate, toyed with as an explanation of the inevitability of the change from girlhood to womanhood, but ultimately dismissed if it’s to be employed as an excuse for misogyny.

Between (and during) these two types of scenes we are shown, via projection, some of the violent lunacy written on incel forums. (I didn’t feel at all privileged to be given such glimpses into the smallest and darkest chambers of the diseased human heart… but perhaps some audience members need to see this sort of filth. Regardless, the creative choice allows for an explanation of the title: femoid is an incel neologism; combining female and android, it denies women their humanity.)

By the piece’s conclusion, we get clarification of what has occurred between the two dramatic time frames, between the two different series of performed scenes. Curiously, there’s only the smallest hint of an overlap between the two worlds: the men referred to in the school girls’ world are not presented as incels; and there’s no suggestion that anyone they knew is responsible for the horror that has unfolded.

At the simplest level, the piece is an outraged, bewildered reaction to sexual violence.

And there’s an extra element of misery. By the end, the young women have begun to echo the incels’ belligerent, martial language. Of course, every piece of theatre can’t be expected to offer a solution; sometimes it’s enough to record the trauma – which this powerfully does.

Paul Gilchrist

Femoid by Iris Warren

presented by Vixen Theatre Company

at the Old Fitz (as a Late Show) until 10 April

oldfitztheatre.com.au

Image by SMW Photography

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Stage Kiss

24 Mar

The tone is slippery, isn’t it? So says the director of the-play-within-the-play. He’s trying to avoid the director’s job of making decisions, but I felt the line wasn’t just satire, but rather an example of the text being self-referential.

When Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play was first presented in Sydney, I stayed away; the marketing had made it sound like some stupid sex comedy. When I finally saw it at New Theatre in 2025, I was more than pleasantly surprised. Yes, there were sex jokes (possibly too much of the one sex joke) but there was also a joyous profundity.

With Ruhl’s Stage Kiss I was expecting – hoping – for something similar: that the tone might be slippery.

Set in the world of the theatre, there’s wonderful humour. Much of it is parody of bad acting or of bad theatrical writing. In fact, there’s so much of this – like there was of the sex jokes in The Vibrator Play – I was hoping their very excess suggested this play was following what I had assumed to be the Ruhl method … and that soon a glorious profundity would manifest itself.

Someone critical of my approach to writing about theatre might say, that having seen the flowing life blood of the play, I wanted it to congeal.  

(If it were to congeal, the clot would be something like this: the play is an interrogation into the relationship between Art and Life. While rehearsing a play, a terrible 1930’s melodrama, the protagonist reunites with her first love. Similarly, the character she is rehearsing reunites with her first love. Life, it seems, imitates Bad Art. In the second act, we get more of the same, except it’s a new-play-within-a-play, and this time it seems it’s more of a case of a Bad Life imitates Bad Art. The meta-play, Stage Kiss, follows in the grand tradition of warning against Art by using Art. Perhaps Cervantes started it with Don Quixote, telling the tale of the knight errant who tilts at windmills because the books he has read lead him to see them as giants. Austen picks up the baton with Northanger Abbey, in which her heroine – once again because of the books she’s read – sees monstrous gothic plots in the most mundane of circumstances. And pick a Fringe Festival anywhere on the planet, and there’s a good chance there’s a show in which a young actor outlines how they finally divested themselves of the nonsense they learnt from rom-coms or romance novels or similar rubbish. And, as well as the-plays-within-a-play structure, there’s another element of Stage Kiss that suggests Ruhl’s target is the spell of fiction: there’s a comically-heated-discussion about the concept of soul-mates. Now, the existence of soul-mates implies the existence of Fate, which more than implies that Life, rather than being a crazy bunch of stuff that happens, is actually a Narrative. The comically-heated-discussion in question considers Who it is who might be the author of such a meta-Narrative.

But, of course, all of the above is only for you if you’re the sort of person who likes your theatre to congeal.)

The flowing life blood of Stage Kiss is humour – and director Alice Livingstone’s production nails it. Livingstone has put together a top cast and elicits from them excellent comic performances.

Emma Delle-Vedove is hilarious as the bewildered protagonist. Jason Spindlow as her first love gives a beautifully funny portrayal of a kid-adult. Frank Shanahan as a cast member of the plays-within-a-play excels at that most tricky of tasks for a talented actor: employing your considerable skills to portray bad acting. Nicholas Papademetriou as the undecided director of the-plays-within-a-play is an utter delight.

Paul Gilchrist

Stage Kiss by Sarah Ruhl

At New Theatre until 11 April

newtheatre.org.au

Image by Bob Seary

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