Stuck at La Mama (end 26 May), and
A Large Attendance in the Antechamber, a remarkable solo show by Brian Lipson.
We then discuss Retrograde at MTC, which Nick saw but I did not. We mention some upcoming shows: Sea Wolves Howl, Between the Lines, Pride & Prejudice the Musical, and Losing Face at MTC.
Click this link: ArtsWeekly-Sat6JUNE2026
11 mins
Written, performed & designed by Brian Lipson (& Francis Galton)
At Trades Hall, Council Chambers, Carlton, until 7 June 2026
RISING Festival 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ****/1/2 (4.5)
This review is published only on this blog. I will also talk about it on Arts Weekly, 3MBS, on Saturday 6 June at about 10.45am.
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| Brian Lipson, A Large Attendance in the Antechamber, supplied |
Written by Megan Twycross
At La Mama HQ until 24 May 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***1/2
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 6 June 2026. (Apologies that I was not on air for my usual spot on Sat 16 May.) KH
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| STUCK_Caroline Lee, Eva Seymour-image Darren_Gill |
Stuck, by Megan Twycross, is a deceptively simple two-hander, set in the deli at a supermarket. It focuses entirely and intensely on the fractious relationship and tedious work of the senior deli worker, Old One (Caroline Lee), and the new-blood novice, Young One (Eva Seymour).
The play, directed deftly, intelligently and sensitively by Susie Dee, raises the issues of the working under-class, women and poverty, status and lack of choice in the workplace.
When the bright-eyed, young trainee arrives, she declares that she plans to spend six months, save money and then take off on her travels around the world before embarking on a new and successful path. However, fate intervenes.
The production is staged in the small La Mama space, with a sparse set design (Linda McCauley) comprising only two stainless steel deli counters, a plastic strip curtain upstage, and black and white check linoleum. The brisk, fast-moving dialogue is as spare as the design.
Lee, as always, brings a formidable presence and nuanced performance to the older woman who has been “stuck” for decades in her dead-end job, with no prospects and a fantasy home life. Her only power is over her trainee and Lee relishes the character’s snide insults, demeaning slights and doom-saying.
Seymour, as Young One, effectively travels from perky, hopeful and certain, to disillusioned and trapped.
Twycross’s dialogue is crisp and taut, straddling the abstract and the hyper-real. It uses repetition and language that is almost a new Aussie dialect to illuminate these two women and their predicaments.
Stuck challenges our notion about choice, about being stuck in the workplace, in a relationship, a world-view, or even a dream. It is a tragedy littered with comic moments.
By Kate Herbert
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| Caroline Lee, Eva Seymour-image Darren_Gill |
Cast
Caroline Lee as Old One
Eva Seymour as Young One
Creative Team
Megan Twycross – Writer
Susie Dee – Director
Linda McCauley - Set & Costume Designer
Ian Moorhead – Sound Designer
Co-Lighting Designers – Amelia Lever-Davidson & Spencer Herd
In this radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 9 May 2026, I talk to Phillipa Edwards about The Glass Menagerie at MTC, Julius Caesar by Bell Shakespeare, and ART by Yasmina Reza.
This is a good selection of shows. It's 9min 47.
NB: This is a repost of my August 2025 review of Pride and Prejudice by Bloomshed. This production opens on 15 May 2026 at Malthouse.
THEATRE
Created by Bloomshed, adapted from Jane Austen
At Darebin Arts Centre until 10 Aug 2025
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***1/2 (3.5)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 16 Aug 2025. KH
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| Bloomshed's Pride and Prejudice_Darebin Arts Speakeasy_Syd Brisbane, Laura Aldous, Anna Louey, Elizabeth Brennan and Lauren Swain_photographer Sarah Walker |
Even if you’re a die-hard Jane Austen fan—or perhaps especially if you are—Bloomshed’s irreverent, chaotic adaptation of Pride and Prejudice will absolutely tickle your taste buds.
Don’t expect a classical take à la the iconic BBC version starring the unforgettable Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. This production swings wildly from parody to political satire, then back to pantomime—often within a single scene.
Staged atop a giant, circular platform decorated like a lavish wedding cake—complete with flourishes, rosettes, and even an oversized dessert fork—this version is anything but subtle.
Yes, the familiar faces are all there: the five Bennet daughters, their frantic mother, and long-suffering father, along with the usual romantic misadventures and obsession with marriage. But that’s where most of the resemblance ends.
Emily Carr plays Mrs Bennet as a manic, loud, and hilariously profane schemer desperate to marry off her daughters. Meanwhile, Mr Bennet is quite literally a potted plant—wilted, silent, and barely clinging to life. It’s absurd and oddly perfect.
James Jackson’s Darcy is pompous, socially inept, and impeccably buttoned-up, while James Malcher's Bingley bounces around like a clueless golden retriever. Laura Aldous doubles up brilliantly as the supercilious, hee-hawing Caroline Bingley and the outrageously flirtatious Lydia. Elizabeth Brennan shines as Lizzie—the sharp, proud heroine—and Anna Louey is charmingly sweet as Jane. Lauren Swain’s Mary is a goth obsessed with rifles, and poor Kitty (Syd Brisbane) remains mostly unnoticed... but that’s another story.
The performances are grotesque, exaggerated, and delightfully comedic. Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Malcher) is an over-the-top panto dame, while her daughter, Anne (Louey), appears as nothing more than a talking skull. No kidding.
The play’s modern lens draws sharp attention to enduring themes: romance, marriage, property, and the role of women as chattels needing a dowry to be “worthy.”
Highlights include wildly inventive choreography—an explosive mash-up of period dance and funky, sassy contemporary moves.
However, not everything hits the mark. Some moments drag, like the prolonged awkwardness at Lady de Bourgh’s tea party, and the final scene where Darcy and Lizzie break the fourth wall to question whether romantic hope is a lie. It's clever but feels unnecessary as an ending to an otherwise anarchic production.
Still, one thing’s for certain: you'll never look at Colin Firth—or Pride and Prejudice—the same way again.
By Kate Herbert
Cast:
THEATRE
Written by Tennessee Williams
By Melbourne Theatre Company
At Southbank Theatre, The Sumner until 5 June 2026 (Geelong 11–13 June)
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ★★★★ (4)
This review is published only on this blog. A radio version will air on Arts Weekly on 3MBS, Sat 2 May 2026.
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| Millie Donaldson, Alison Whyte and Tim Draxl. Photo_ Pia Johnson |
Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, which premiered on Broadway in 1945, draws deeply on the playwright’s own family history. Set in St Louis during the Depression-era 1930s, it unfolds in a cramped apartment that seems to hover between reality and recollection: a fire escape leads out to a harsher world of factories and cinema palaces, while inside, time stalls among faded photographs, worn furniture and the ghost of a gentleman long gone.
Director Mark Wilson handles this memory play with clarity and intelligence. The first half emphasises the comedy, eliciting generous laughs at the characters’ foibles and delusions. Gradually, though, the tone darkens, and by the second half, humour gives way to pathos, as dreams falter and fracture as easily as Laura’s delicate glass figures.
Tom Wingfield, who serves as both character and narrator, frames the story as both theatre and memory, a blurred reconstruction of a past he cannot quite escape. The outside world — industrial, noisy, urgent, unforgiving — presses in on the Wingfield household, but within, Amanda and Laura remain suspended in a more fragile, illusory realm.
Alison Whyte is electrifying as Amanda Wingfield, one of the great roles in the American theatrical canon. Her performance is masterly: every fluttering recollection, every manipulative aside, every brittle insistence on gentility is rendered with precision and emotional force.
Whyte captures Amanda’s fierce love and equally fierce denial, her longing for a vanished Southern girlhood of balls and beaux, and her simmering resentment towards the husband who abandoned the family 16 years earlier. It is a richly layered portrayal that anchors the production.
Tim Draxl brings a muscular volatility to Tom, the aspiring writer trapped in a warehouse job, his frustration simmering beneath a veneer of duty. Laura, played with less assurance by Millie Donaldson in her stage debut, is physically constrained by a leg brace, and emotionally by crippling shyness and retreats into a world of old gramophone records and her treasured glass animals.
However, in Wilson’s production, the menagerie remains unseen, save for a single unicorn, delicately handled in a key moment.
Harry McGee’s Jim O’Connor, the long-awaited “gentleman caller”, arrives with an easy charm that momentarily steadies the household, even as he unwittingly dismantles Amanda’s carefully constructed hopes for her daughter.
The design (Kat Chan, Matilda Woodroofe, Paul Lim) is understated and evocative, reinforcing the play’s memory-soaked atmosphere without overstatement.
This is not a radical reimagining, but a thoughtful, finely balanced production that is elevated by Whyte’s superb performance, which lingers long after the final, fading light.
Cast
Alison Whyte - Amanda Wingfield,
Tim Draxl - Tom Wingfield
Millie Donaldson - Laura Wingfield
Jim O’Connor -Harry McGee
Creative Team
Mark Wilson (Director)
Kat Chan (Set Designer),
Matilda Woodroofe (Costume Designer)
Paul Lim (Lighting Designer),
Marco Cher (Composer & Sound Designer)
Geraldine Cook-Dafner (Voice & Dialect Coach)
Jamila Main (Assistant Director).
THEATRE
Written by William Shakespeare, by Bell Shakespeare
At Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne until 10 May 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***(3)
This review is published only on
this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat. 2 May 2026.
KH
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| JuliusCaesar_Brigid Zengeni and Leon Ford_Photo Brett Boardman. |
Bell Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar lands in Melbourne with a polished surface and an insistent sense of contemporary relevance, but beneath the sleek exterior, this is a production that struggles to locate the play’s moral and emotional centre.
Peter Evans’ direction opts for a fluid, modern setting—suggestive rather than specific—where political unrest simmers in an atmosphere of stylish unease. The design elements are undeniably arresting: sharply tailored costumes, an ominous soundscape, and bursts of violence that punctuate the action. Yet this visual confidence is not matched by interpretive clarity. The conceptual frame feels more like a gesture toward relevance than a fully realised argument, and as a result, the production’s political stakes remain frustratingly diffuse.
Brigid Zengeni’s Brutus, a character that might be considered the production’s anchor, is curiously opaque. While the verse is handled well, the internal conflict that should drive the character — Brutus's tortured justification of betrayal — rarely lands with sufficient weight. Zengeni’s performance feels controlled rather than compelled, leaving Brutus’ moral dilemma too easily resolved. Evans’ casting a woman as Brutus has promise, but the character’s gender change assumes more importance and focus than Brutus’s internal struggle.
Leon Ford as Cassius is a highlight, bringing a watchful intelligence, stillness and power to this character who some Romans consider to be too clever and too intellectual. Cassius slowly and subtly manoeuvres Brutus and several others into the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar, who has become a despot and sees himself as a God.
However, the dynamic between Cassius and Brutus never quite ignites. Their conspiracy lacks the dangerous urgency that should propel the first half of the play.
As Caesar, Septimus Caton emphasises the character’s bombast and arrogance that borders on caricature. While this underscores the character’s hubris, it also diminishes the impact of his assassination; the fall of this Caesar feels less like a seismic political rupture and more like an inevitability.
Mark Leonard Winter’s Mark Antony, too, proves uneven. His transformation from sidelined observer to political operator is sketched rather than developed, and the rhetorical power of the famous funeral oration — so often the play’s electrifying centrepiece — is diluted by self-conscious delivery.
The ensemble, in general, works cohesively, though they are not always well served by the production’s wavering tone, which veers between high-stakes tragedy and a kind of ironic detachment.
There is, certainly, an attempt to connect Shakespeare’s exploration of power and populism to a contemporary moment. But without a firmer interpretive grip, the production’s relevance remains more asserted than earned.
That tonal inconsistency is the production’s central issue. Evans repeatedly undercuts tension with stylistic choices that undervalues the text. The result is a Julius Caesar that feels conceptually busy but dramatically undernourished.
BY KATE HERBERT
Melbourne Cast
Brigid Zengeni – Brutus
Mark Leonard Winter – Mark Antony
Septimus Caton – Julius Caesar
Leon Ford – Cassius
Gareth Reeves – Casca
Ray Chong Nee – Metellus
James Lugton – Decius
Ava Madon – Calpurnia
Jules Billington – Portia
Ruby Maishman – Cinna
Creative Team
Director – Peter Evans
Lighting Designer– Amelia Lever-Davidson
Costume Designer – Simon Romaniuk
Composer & Sound Designer – Madeleine Piccard
Fight & Movement Director – Tim Dashwood
Voice Director – Jack Starkey-GIll
THEATRE
Written by Yasmina Reza
At Comedy Theatre until 17 May 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ★★★★ (4)
This review is published only on this blog. A radio review will air on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 2 May 2026. KH
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| Damon Herriman, Richard Roxburgh & Toby Schmitz-Photo Brett Boardman |
Art remains a deliciously barbed dissection of male friendship, taste and the fragile scaffolding of shared values. Yasmina Reza’s script, in Christopher Hampton’s deft translation, still cuts cleanly, its irony intact, its arguments spiralling with surgical precision.
The premise is deceptively simple: a painting — white, expensive, and, to some eyes, absurd — becomes the fault line along which a long-standing friendship fractures. But this is no mere comedy of manners. Reza spins a sticky, hilarious web of intellectual one-upmanship, insecurity and barely suppressed rage. The men spar, spit and circle one another, their certainties dissolving as quickly as they are asserted.
Damon Herriman’s Serge is all cool hauteur and quiet provocation, a man intoxicated by his own cultural authority. Herriman lets the character’s smugness bloom just enough to invite attack. Opposite him, Richard Roxburgh’s Marc is gloriously combative — pompous, rigid and increasingly unhinged. Roxburgh finds both the humour and the menace in Marc’s outrage, revealing a man terrified that the rules he lives by are no longer shared.
Between them, Toby Schmitz’s Yvan is the perfect, flailing buffer — anxious, ingratiating, and quietly despairing. Schmitz brings a nervy physicality and comic timing that makes Yvan’s desperate attempts at conciliation both absurd and oddly moving.
Under Lee Lewis’s brisk direction, the production embraces the volatility of these fracturing relationships. Alliances shift with dizzying speed; each man is, in turn, isolated, victimised and exposed. The downward trajectory of their affection feels both inevitable and shocking.
The design supports this precision. Charles Davis’s spare, elegant set is itself a kind of blank canvas, allowing the actors’ emotional chaos to supply the colour. Paul Jackson’s lighting adds a cool, formal sheen with stylish lamps and sculpted light that quietly echo the play’s preoccupation with aesthetics and perception.
It is still extraordinary that a play about people arguing over art can be so riveting. Reza skewers critical theory, satirises the art world and, more pointedly, exposes how precariously friendship rests on presumed common ground. A tiny shift in taste becomes a seismic rupture.
Funny, fierce and uncomfortably recognisable, this Art proves that the smallest differences can have the largest consequences.
By Kate Herbert
Cast
Marc – Richard Roxburgh
Serge – Damon Herriman
Yvan – Toby Schmitz
Creative Team
Director – Lee Lewis
Lighting Design – Paul Jackson
Set & Costume Design – Charles Davis
Original Music – Max Lambert
In this very short radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 4 April 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst about Ageing: Results May Vary, a very funny Melbourne Comedy Festival show by Geoff Paine & Ross Daniels and mention, briefly, the Com Fest launch on April 16 of Rod Quantock: Comedy Warrior. 3min15
Click link above.
COMEDY FESTIVAL
Written & performed by Geoff Paine & Ross Daniels
At Bard's Apothecary, Crossley Place, Melbourne, until Sat 4 April 2026. 6.45pm
Melbourne Comedy Festival 2026
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: **** (4)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 4 April 2026. KH
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| Ross Daniels & Geoff Paine |
Ross Daniels and Geoff Paine are two very funny, highly skilled performers. Now well past Seniors’ Card eligibility, they furiously plunder their own lives for material about ageing —and strike comedy gold.
The audience resembles an MTC matinee: a sea of greying heads nodding in recognition. Almost every gag lands, drawing hearty, knowing laughter from a predominantly over-55 crowd.
A brisk audience poll confirms Boomers (Yay, team!) and Gen X are firmly in charge, with only a smattering of younger attendees bravely holding their ground.
NB: No Gen Alphas were harmed in the making of this show. (If you don’t know, they’re babies!)
For 55 minutes, Paine and Daniels catalogue the indignities of ageing: statins, fish oil, calcium levels, prostate woes, and the twin betrayals of hair and memory loss. You can recall your childhood phone number — but not the name of that actor in that thing. You know — the one with the hair.
There’s a cheeky visit from the Grim Reaper, offering ominous (and darkly funny) reminders of what’s to come.
A running memory test — three words to retain until the end — has the audience muttering to themselves like exam candidates. Just in case.
There’s some deliberately daffy dancing, including a Nutbush with a game audience member, plus original songs about ageing and a cleverly titled Oasis medley that’s best left unspoiled.
It’s a short run, but the show deserves a longer life — or at least regular bookings at retirement villages. They could repeat it weekly; parts of the audience might find it fresh each time. Wicked.
This is sharply observed, warmly delivered identification comedy for older audiences. Flash your Seniors’ Card for a concession — and take the train while you’re at it. No MYKI fare required ‘cos PT is free for April.
Cast
Geoff Paine & Ross Daniels
Creative Team
Lighting & Sound Operator and walk-on performer: Matt …? (Forget his surname!) Ah! Campbell!
In this radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 21 March 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst about Little Absences by Grazia Marin, and about Maureen Hartley’s Life Achievement Award at Victorian Green Room Awards 2026.
It's about 7-8 mins.
THEATRE
Written by Grazia Marin
At Chapel off Chapel until Sat 21 March at 2pm & 7.30pm
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: **1/2 (2.5)
This review is published only on this blog. I’ll present a radio review on Arts Weekly on 3MBS on Sat 21 March, 2026. KH
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| L-R: Piera Dennerstein, Janet Watson Kruse-Image by Bernard Peasley |
The premise and intention of Grazia Marin’s play, Little Absences, has great potential for a short play with a small cast, and some elements of this first season are successful. In an ageing population, many of us are faced with the declining health of parents and grandparents. It is a confronting and challenging experience.
Chris (Janet Watson Kruse) is an older woman suffering escalating dementia, but fiercely denying the increasing problems she has coping with living independently and alone. She struggles with basic tasks such as feeding and washing herself, keeping her house clean and the fridge stocked. However, she does manage to keep a secret stash of alcohol that she hides from her attentive, worried daughter, Jenny (Piera Dennerstein).
Chris has another precious secret that she keeps hidden even from her daughter: as a young woman she had some success as an emerging writer, particularly of poetry. In her demented state, she craves the creativity of the written word but wrestles with memory, language and the capacity to frame and retain an idea. It is heart-breaking to watch her struggling to retrieve that creative state – perhaps almost as distressing as watching her struggle with her alcohol abuse and inability to do the most basic activities.
Kruse is committed and immersed in this fraught but determined character, capturing her frustration and intermittent confusion. Dennerstein embodies the despair and concern of the daughter who respects her mother‘s wishes to be left alone but knows that her intervention is inevitable. An unexpected visitor, Alex (Veronicka Devlin), a young writer who crashed her motorbike nearby, provides some perspective and triggers Chris’s memories of her own writing.
This production, directed by Elnaz Sheshgelani, runs two hours with interval, but needs some vigorous and astute editing to reduce it to perhaps 70 minutes. The dialogue is unnecessarily repetitive, there are some logical inconsistencies, and the structure needs some reshaping.
The play lacks dramatic conflict and has limited dramatic tension and dramatic action. Most of the action is described rather than being “Now“ action. It needs more compelling revelations and stronger turning points in the narrative. All these issues make the play more like an extended monologue interspersed with some character interactions.
The daughter and the visitor’s roles could serve the action better, but perhaps more interesting would be having an actor to play various roles from Chris‘s past: her husband Frank and Eduardo, the exotic lover from her youthful sojourn as a writer in Spain. This actor could also play the visitor.
It is clear that Chris didn’t like her husband Frank, so it is surprising that she chooses to use him as her invisible confidant. It might be more interesting to see her savaging him in her memory with a real actor playing the character.
A flashback to the sensuality of her youth with Eduardo might add an interesting scene. The memories and dreams are captured only by a few slides, scenes of locations and characters and this could provide a visual background to other scenes, rather than being a distraction or interruption.
The fact that Chris was a successful writer when she was young, is insufficient. Perhaps there could be clear revelations about Frank’s extramarital affair and dysfunctional marriage.
Here’s another idea: Jenny’s song, based on Chris’s poem, Little Absences, could begin the play and punctuate it until we become aware, at the end, that it is a eulogy. This might give the piece a dramatic shape and a clear structure. The daughter could then become a kind of narrator, thus avoiding Chris having to constantly explain to us what she’s experiencing as a dementing, but determinedly independent woman.
However, much of the latter part of my review is dramaturgy, and my role here is to be reviewer and critic. There’s certainly potential in Little Absences but, at this stage, neither the script nor the production have fulfilled that potential.
By Kate Herbert
Cast
Chris - Janet Watson Kruse
Alex - Veronicka Devlin
Jenny - Piera Dennerstein
Creative Team
Writer - Grazia Marin
Director - Elnaz Sheshgelani
KATE HERBERT-3MBS-SAT-07-MARCH-2026
In this radio review spot on Arts Weekly on Saturday 7 March 2026, I talk to Nick Tolhurst and Phillipa Edwards about La Mama Theatre’s new program of theatre events and I talk briefly about Moongazing that I saw On Demand (on screen).
Click the link nelow to listen. Its about 7 mins.
Program 2026 Summary
Currently playing:
Back to Te Maunga -Courthouse
Some Secret Should Be Kept -La Mama HQ
Moongazing & Saints -On Demand
1. La Mama Presents: Feb, March, April, May
Productions: 1 month block, 2 shows per month -one show at La Mama & Courthouse,
Education (March & May) selected productions)
On Demand season to follow all 8 shows (Feb – May)
Support: Robert Salzer Foundation.
2. Play: Scratch, Explorations, Immerse: June, July, Aug
Scratch- a live platform for performance makers to test new ideas in front of peers and community
Support: Cybec Foundation
Explorations- Artists are given three nights of public presentation (both venues)
Immerse - deeply focused 12-week practice-led program for 16 mid-career writers
Support: Cybec Foundation, John T Reid Trusts, and the City of Melbourne Multi-year Arts Grants Program in partnership with Arts Centre Melbourne and Regional Arts Victoria.
Partnerships:
3. Hope Punk Climate Festival: 1-20 Sept (TBC.)
storytelling and skills development in climate advocacy and action,
Support: in partnership with Learning Experiences Program Science Gallery Melbourne and Griffith University's Performance Ecology Research Lab (P+ERL)
4. Melbourne Festival of Puppetry: 21-27 Sept
Support: City of Melbourne and Arts Centre Melbourne.
5. Melbourne Fringe Festival at La Mama
October
6. Cultural Conservation in Action: November: First Nations-led month. Directed by Glenn Shea.Conservation of our First Nation's story, songs and dances
7. Faradays: December
Party month: music, poetry, cabaret
A Carlton takeover
Support: Local Business Partnerships.
