Pride & Prejudice -repost of 2025 review

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

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

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Cast:

• Elizabeth Bennet: Elizabeth Brennan
• Mr Darcy: James Jackson
• Mrs Bennet / Georgiana Darcy: Emily Carr
• Jane Bennet / Anne de Bourgh: Anna Louey
• Mary Bennet / Mr Wickham: Lauren Swain
• Kitty Bennet / Mr Collins: Syd Brisbane
• Lydia Bennet / Caroline Bingley: Laura Aldous
• Mr Bingley / Lady Catherine de Bourgh: James Malcher
• Mr Bennet: monstera plant

 

The Glass Menagerie REVIEW 1 May 2026 **** (4)

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.

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).

 

Julius Caesar–REVIEW–Bell Shakespeare, 24 April 2026 ***

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

 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

 

ART–REVIEW –23 April 2026 ****

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

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