The story of Pygmalion is a well known one: across the famous movie, musical and original play, a professor bets he can transform the life of a flower girl by teaching her proper English rather than her cockney dialect. The Australian Shakespeare Company’s production is a sharp exploration of social and gender inequality, transformation and awakening of self-respect.
Oklahoma! opened last weekend to a full house of loyal supporters of the Production Company, celebrating the first show of the 20th anniversary season. First performed by the company in 2005, director Chris Parker (who played Will Parker in 2005) brings back the nostalgia, romance and Wild West to the Arts Centre Melbourne for 11 shows only.
Todrick Hall rose to fame in American Idol in 2009, before exploding online as a YouTube star, and making his Broadway debut as Lola in Kinky Boots. He’s had his own docu-series on MTV, been a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race and now with four studio albums under his belt, the Todrick Hall American: Forbidden tour hits Australian shores in June.
Another one of festival favourite from last year Clara Cupcakes is back! Join her for a party celebrating four years for her in the comedy circuit, where you’ll walk into the cutest gathering of the festival. Balloons, pass the parcel, piñata and more await you in Clara’s burlesque cabaret wonderland.
An enlightened, charming and empowered look at aging and growing up too fast, Amity Dry brings her 39 Forever show back to Chapel off Chapel for her comedy festival debut. We loved it last year and this year is no different: it’s still a sparkling, enthralling, fun, laugh out loud night of cabaret and song.
Fresh off his run at Brisbane Comedy Festival last year and playing a variety of venues across the festival, Rhys Nicholson is a clever, insightful and sassy comic in his latest show Seminal, which it is.
One of my fabulous festival favourites is back with a darker but equally as funny show, Let’s Hang Out, Jude Perl is know for her fantastic voice, excellent skills on a piano, her magical, awkward comedic timing and her witty way with words, composing fantastic, savage or observant songs about her life.
Ladies, gentlemen, and all those yet to make up there mind, it’s time to roll up for the quirkiest cabaret circus in town- the Briefs boys are back! On their third visit to Melbourne and lighting up The Famous Spiegeltent at Arts Centre Melbourne, they’re as loud, proud and funny as ever, presenting cabaret, dance, drag, circus tricks… it’s RuPaul’s Drag Race meets an Aussie Cirque du Soleil.
It’s Gillian Cosgriff’s 10th anniversary of song writing, and where better to celebrate it than the basement of Melbourne Town Hall! With four solo shows, 25 festival seasons, and crowds of all sizes under her belt, she returns to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival to play her favourite original songs from her varied career and rework some old songs in new ways.
A self indulgent but witty media reel welcomes you to Joel Creasey’s show Blonde Bombshell, where he will take you on an hour of laugh out loud celebrity stories, awkward tales and stories from his life.
I never thought I’d coin the term ‘opera dominatrix’ and yet here we are, Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2018 and BK Opera are presenting Pirates of Penzance, only this isn’t the version your grandmother took you to see when you were a kid, it’s the everyone in your undies, whips and bondage kind of adults only show… except it’s much more tame than that.
One of the best things about seeing improv performers as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is that no performance will be the same, leading to completely brand new, never seen before shows performed every night. The Big Hoo Ha light up the festival again this year following a sell out run at MICF 2017 and 8 years on the scene in Melbourne as a beloved weekly improv group. Non stop fun and adventure is in store!
A deeply emotional musical that’s still relevant in the days following marriage equality passing in Australia, Stage Art’s bare The Musical has lit up Chapel off Chapel. Complete with using the Chapel’s original stained glass windows as a centre piece, and with an ensemble of power house voices, this show is a fitting and modern Victorian professional debut for the show.
This week the Festival of Live Art takes over the city, so get ready to twerk, wear onesies, swim, get sledged and everyone’s favourite, audience participation! The festival returns for the third time and is Australia’s largest festival of live art that celebrates contemporary, experimental, interactive and participatory artworks that are unlike any other – you won’t see the same thing twice.
Every year or so, I see a show that stays with me for life – for it’s content, performances, something makes it stick in the back of my memory and continue to rave about it long after the curtain as fallen. This year, I strongly feel it will be this enlightening, powerful, honest and witty feminist manifesto that takes on the big bad c word – cancer.
Melbourne Playback Theatre Company’s shows are all made up of real events, and they’re back for 2018 with two days of performances for all ages, with Love is Love and Imaginarium.
A loud, technology infused millennial call to action, like a psychedelic rock and roll drug infused dream, American Idiot has smashed into the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne following a sell out season in Brisbane in 2017.
Falsettos is a fascinating and edgy piece of theatre for a number of reasons – its snide and witty Jewish humour, its exploration of homosexuality at a time where we weren’t as out and proud as we are now, and right as the HIV AIDs crisis broke and no one knew what was going on. Stage Art have bitten off a huge emotional rollercoaster of a musical, delivering a show that examines love and the crisis of masculinity.
