Theatre: Head Full of Love (★★★½)

By Alana Valentine

Queensland Theatre Company/Performing Lines

Directed by Wesley Enoch

Associate director Catarina Hebbard

Designer Susanne Roanuike

Performed by Paula Delaney Nasarski and Annie Byron 

Margaret River Cultural Centre

September 24, 2015

An old woman (Paula Delaney Nasarski) sits on a low stool crocheting. Around her are bundles of wool and the instruments of her craft.

“Old” is a relative term, though. We're in the town camp outside Alice Springs, and there you can get very old very young. As the woman, Tilly, says, in the town camps “bad things happen, and they happen to you”.

Bad things do happen in Alana Valentine’s sad, sweet Head Full of Love, but good things too, and in the most unlikely of ways.

Read the complete review in The West Australian

Theatre: Black Diggers (★★★★½)

Queensland Theatre Company
Written by Tom Wright
Directed by Wesley Enoch
Designed by Stephen Curtis
Cast: George Bostock, Luke Carroll, Shaka Cook, Trevor Jamieson, Kirk Page, Guy Simon, Colin Smith, Eliah Watego and Tibian Wyles
Heath Ledger Theatre
Until 7 March



Late in Tom Wright’s Black Diggers, a returned WWI serviceman begins bleeding under the arm, and a piece of shrapnel, buried in his body for decades – a “bit of left-over war” – comes to the surface.
It’s an apt metaphor for the work done by this magnificent piece of storytelling.
Something like 800 indigenous Australian men sidestepped regulations that barred them – as non-European non-citizens – from enlisting in the 1st AIF. They fought at Gallipoli, in Palestine and on the Western Front, and gained respect and comradeship in the trenches, where mud and blood covers all colours of skin, and killing and dying come alike to all races.
For many, though, their homecoming was appalling, their service largely ignored by a country unprepared to afford them the dignity and opportunities of being an Australian, let alone one of its returning heroes.

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

Theatre: Managing Carmen

Black Swan State Theatre Company/ QTC

Written by David Williamson

Directed by Wesley Enoch

Designed by Richard Roberts

Lighting design by Trent Suidgeest

Sound design by Tony Brumpton

Audio Visual design by Declan McMonagle

Featuring John Batchelor, Tim Dashwood, Claire Lovering, Anna McGahan and Greg McNeill

Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre

Until December 2

At 201cm tall, David Williamson could have been an AFL ruckman. Instead, he used his 1970s heyday to establish himself as Australia’s pre-eminent, and most bankable, playwright.

With Managing Carmen, Williamson returns to footy 35 years after The Club, his signature hit about shenanigans at a barely-disguised Collingwood.

We’re back at the Pies, but this time it’s conniving managers and their precious players – rather than coaches and board members – who take centre-stage.
As an exposé of big-time sport, it’s 30 years out of date; as an argument for tolerance and honesty, it’s wafer-thin and unmemorable, and, in a gobsmackingly horrible first half, it reduces its actors to the grossest of caricatures.

But here’s the thing. Like a battered old champ having a bad day, Williamson demands to be taken on his own terms, and treated with caution if not respect.

Link here to the complete review in The West Australian