Music: Joe Cocker

Music: John Legend

Riverside Theatre
December 16, 2014

John Legend, inheritor of the smooth sexy R&B of Marvin Gaye and Al Green and journeyman to the superstars, has had a slow burning ascent since his first album, Get Lifted, hit internationally and won him three Grammys in 2004.
His sold-out Riverside Theatre show on Tuesday demonstrated that his star now burns as bright as those of his illustrious peers.

Musical: Thriller Live

Original Concept Adrian Grant
Director and Choreographer Gary Lloyd
Musical Director John Maher
Featuring MiG Ayesa, Alex Buchanan, Sean Christopher, Samantha Johnson and Tyrone Lee
Crown Theatre
Until December 21

One of the very few things the shameless Michael Jackson: The Immortal – an exploitation of the late King of Pop by his family and Cirque du Soleil that cleaned up at the Perth Arena last year – got right was its name.
There are Jackson tributes of one kind or another all over the place, and I don’t doubt we’ll be seeing them from here to eternity.
Short of reincarnation, though, Thriller Live, the latest tribute show to arrive in Perth, is what Jackson’s fans want, and it’s easy to see why.

Music: Ben Folds and WASO

Perth Concert Hall
November 28, 2014

“I’m not bad”, declared the singer and songwriter, Ben Folds, “but you should come see the real stuff.”
Folds made this self-deprecating pronouncement during a lively defence of symphony orchestras after his Piano Concerto – Movement 3, a not-at-all-bad mash-up of the form, in the first set of his Perth Concert Hall stand with WASO (conducted by Nicholas Buc).
The set needed it, and more, to overcome a swampy sound that reduced songs like the opener, Effington, to a blare. It exposed Folds’ weaknesses – a voice best described as plaintive, and melodies that are more chord progressions than tunes – and obscured the strengths that have made him a star: complex, cunning lyrics and muscular rhythm piano playing.

Theatre: Joey the Mechanical Boy

The Nest Ensemble
Written and devised by Margi Brown Ash and Leah Mercer
Performed by Margi Brown Ash and Phillip Miolin
Directed by Leah Mercer
Set and costume designer Tessa Darcey
Lighting designer Karen Cook
Sound designer Joe Lui

Until November 22

Margi Brown Ash and Phillip Miolin (pic Leigh Brennan)


In their award-winning Eve (2012), the writer/performer Margi Brown Ash and writer/director Leah Mercer told the sad story of the now-forgotten Australian writer Eve Langley. The biographical details, though, were just a jumping-off point for their exploration of Eve’s rapture, and for Ash’s remarkable performance.
Their new play, Joey: the Mechanical Boy, also deals with real events and people. They may be obscure now, but, in the American frenzy for all things Freudian after WWII, the autistic boy Joey, his so-called “refrigerator mother” and the psychotherapist Dr Bruno Bettelheim, were big news.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian  

Theatre: Those Who Fall in Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon the Ocean Floor

By Finegan Kruckemeyer
Jo Morris and theMOXY collective
Directed by Adam Mitchell
Designed by India Mehta
Lighting design Chris Donnelly
Sound design Ben Collins
Starring Jo Morris, Renée Newman-Storen and Ben Mortley
Blue Room Theatre until 29 November

Jo Morris (l) Ben Mortley and Renée Newman-Storen

It’s a name to take seriously, despite itself. I don’t mean Those Who Fall in Love Like Anchors Dropped Upon the Ocean Floor so much as its writer, the extravagantly-monikered Finegan Kruckemeyer.
There are many of the good things about children’s theatre in Twifilladutoff, despite its decidedly adult themes and content. Four stories fold across each other over time and space. Each glitters with humour, but a melancholy hangs over them. Love, for all these characters, is as elusive as it is fundamental; life devours both itself and any fool who dares to tell the time. 

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian.

Theatre: Gasp!

Black Swan State Theatre Company and Queensland Theatre Company
by Ben Elton
Directed by Wesley Enoch
Designed by Christina Smith
With Damon Lockwood, Caroline Brazier, Lucy Goleby, Greg McNeill and Steven Rooke
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre
Until November 9

Nothing to get steamed up about: Damon Lockwood (r), Greg McNeill and Steven Rooke (pic: Gary Marsh)

Black Swan wraps up its 2014 season with revivals of two all but contemporaneous comedies; the first was Neil Simon’s 1993 Laughter on the 23rd Floor; now we have Ben Elton’s Gasp!, an update of his Gasping from 1990.
The Neil Simon was a delight; genuinely funny, and a platform for some bravura performances. The Ben Elton? Meh.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian