Bedroom Farce, Canberra Rep, 19 Feb-7 Mar

 

Alan Ayckbourn's play has a slightly misleading title - while it's set in three bedrooms it's not really a farce (as that genre is far more about propulsive plots and frantic acting-before-thinking). Structurally this is another of Ayckbourn's experiments with form, taking place in three different bedrooms over one very long night and into the next morning as the residents mostly fail to get a good night's sleep due to the rampaging couple Trevor and Susannah. It's a look at hetro relationships as they were in the 1970s and as they still frequently are now - the minor dissatisfactions, the passive-agressions, the agressive agressions and the late night conversations that have a little too much truth in them. 

In the far left bedroom are Ernest and Delia, who's idea of an adventurous night is a nice restaurant followed by sardines-on-toast in bed. Pat Gallagher gives Ernest a nicely subdued, slightly Eyore-ish nature as he worries about the damp patch and the ettiquete of tipping, while Sally Rynveld as Delia has an iron fist in the velvet glove as she steers Ernest none-too-gently towards what she particularly wants. 

In the middle bedroom are Malcolm and Kate, just moved in together and about to have their housewarming but still playing pranks on one another. Antonia Kitzel gives Kate an anxious host energy, trying to show everyone a good time even at the possible expense of her own dignity, while Lachlan Abrahams gives Malcolm bumptious enthusiasm  covering up an easily bruised ego that becomes apparent as their conversation gets a little deeper in the second act. 

On the far right are Jan and Nick - Jan preparing for a night of being social at Malcolm and Kate's housewarming, Nick confined to bed after a recent back injury. Azerie Cromhout gives Jan an inner irritability while Rob de Fries is ragefully self-pitying as Nick fails to keep himself from exacrbating his injuries in all kinds of deligutful ways.

In between all three bedrooms are the dreaded Trevor and Susannah - a relationship on the rocks which infests each of the other three couples in various ways. James Grudnoff gives Trevor a self-centred air, blithely unaware of what he's doing to those around him, while Lara Connolly's Susannah attempts to and mostly fails to maintain her calming mantra. 

Andrew Kay's set gives us the vibes of each of the three host couples pretty easily, from the not-quite-fully-furnished mixed wallpaper of Malcolm and Kate to the modernist-futon-pad of Nick and Jan and the charmingly fusty room of Earnest and Delia. Mike Maloney manages the shifting lighting states across all three across the evening, and James McPherson sets mood well with pre-show tunes and three different ringtones for the telephones in each room. Cate Clelland dresses them all in a mix of evening-and-bedtime wear. 

Aarne Neeme stages a fairly tight production that gets a lot of laughs out of familiar characters and situations, with a little bit of truth in there as well. 

Never Closer, Off The Ledge Theatre, Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre, 19-28 February

 

Photography - Photox - Ben Appleton

Grace Chapple's 2022 play premiered downstairs at Belvoir as part of the independent 25A season, and two years later got a run upstairs as part of the formal season. It's a play about five young friends in an Irish border town, starting in 1977 when they're 18 and enjoying summer holidays, against a background of occasional explosions and possible violence due to the ongoing Troubles. We flash forward to Christmas ten years later, when the friends have dispersed somewhat but are reunited when one of them, who's been living in London for a while, returns with her fiancé, an Englishman, and the mix of old tensions, regrets and the ongoing political tensions bubbles under until things boil over in a shattering climax. An epilogue 30 years later looks at the current generation and how the fallout of their parents' decisions have landed on them. 

Off The Ledge's production is a solid production of Chapple's text - Lachlan Houen directs with a sense of the tensions and the messiness of old friendships reunited - the desire for reconciliation and the regret at old hurts bumping up against each other. He has a rich cast - Emily O'Mahoney as the resentful Deirdre holds a lot of the tensions of the play within her and carries them well, Joel Hrbek as the gentle Jimmy is heartwarmingly kind, and Pippin Carrol as the outsider English Harry is wide-eyed-ly shocked at the hornet's nest he's wandered into while never quite breaking etiquette to escape. 

This is a skilled piece of new Australian writing given an engaging production in the intimacy of the Courtyard studio and is well worth 90 minutes of your time. 

The Taming of the Shrew, Lakespeare, Lake Tuggernong Park (and other venues) , 17 Feb-1 Mar

 Photo by Photox

This is my first time seeing Lakespeare in its natural environment (by a Lake) after seeing "As You Like it" in a pub and "Macbeth" in the B, and it's a delightful experience. These are, by their nature, broad, crowd-pleasing productions and this does indeed please the crowd with a broad audience-friendly production of one of Shakespeare's more problematic comedies. The gender flip in this production tries to combat the more problematic side and bring out the humour, but in essence this is still a play about marriage as a financial rather than an emotional choice, and one in which a massive amount of psychological torture is enacted on one of the lead characters to get them to submit to their partner. 

Karen Vickery directs the cast to play the text fairly full-on, and, particularly in the central Petruchia/Kit plot, this succeeds. She's helped by Ylaria Rogers' performance which can fairly be described as roistering, giving the character a vast amount of confident attack on those around her. Michael Cooper as Kit gives the character a delightful sullenness which given the state of the Paduan marriage market around him is perfectly understandable, and his shock at multiple outrages hitting him is delightful. Yanina Clifton as Grumia serves laughs on a regular basis, reacting wtih just the right amount of shock and awe to keep the audience tickled. 

The Bianco subplot is a bit more complicated - Shakespeare fills it with a lot of deceptions and complications and it's got to be said that Bianco himself doesn't come across as much more than a pretty something to be argued about for most of the subplot - his preferences play a remarkably small part of the material. It's strongly performed but it doesn't entirely escape feeling like empty time-filling as we get the contractual negotiations and impersonations that make up the subplot when we could be getting an insight into how Bianco is thinking and feeling. There's some great hautiness from Guiliana Baggoley as Baptista, Alice Ferguson is delightfully perskikety as Gremia, Alistair James McKenzie is indeed quite pretty and Blue Hyslop is clowny perfection as Biondello gets into a more-than-usually-ridiculous impersonation. 

Costume Designer Helen Wotjas gives a great sense of Renaissance Italy with practicality for running around on a Park Lawn for two hours. Rachel Henson's millinery is also a highling with some sutiably outlandish things for the various characters to don with enthusiasm. 

Lakespeare is by this point 7 plays deep in an ongoing tradition, and the tradition is nicely upheld in this production - it's a fun entry point to Shakespeare that leaves you with plenty to think about afterwards and a lot to delight about in the moment. 

Dave 101 - an Introduction to Poor Life Choices, Canberra Cabaret Festival, ACT Hub, 19 and 21 Feb

(Photo - Photox - Ben Appleton)

When entering the Hub stage for Dave Collins' cabaret, one's struck by the dominant couch onstage. But it's a sign of how relaxed Collins is on the stage that he can put his feet up and still draw an audience to him in a mix of personal stories and diva classics, from the second he launches into "When you're good to Mama" til his departure from the stage, including a couple of duets with friends Kara Murphy, Louiza Blomfield and Amelia Andersson-Nickson. The structure, an autobiography from primary school to now, ties together songs about love, lust, work and vibing with friends, and Collins gives it plenty of personality and his own touch of charm-with-a-slight-side-of-ewwww. 

Collins has always been a fun performer to watch, with a massive voice that rattles the walls of the ACT Hub stage, and a personality that matches. And this is distilled Dave in a one-hour format that gives him chances for plenty of big notes in a song catalogue that largely draws on music theatre and divas (from Chicago to Shrek to Jeckyl and Hyde to Judy Garland to Cry-Baby) and with plenty of laughs to go with the singing. 

 

Matters of the Heart: A show about LOVE - with a cliche-free guarantee, Canberra Cabaret Festival, ACT Hub, 19-20 Feb 2026

 

(Photo by Ben Appleton - Photox)

Deborah O'Toole's cabaret show explores her twin passions - singing and art - in a show exploring the less obvious kinds of love songs - nothing about first love or love-gone-wrong, and plenty looking at the deeper parts of the heart. She draws more from the pop songbook than from the more traditionally musical-theatre-type stuff that normally hits cabaret, and intersperses it with personal commentary and with drawings on her ipad that are duplicated on two screens out the front. Accompanied by the skilled Caleb Campbell, she sings a range of emotional pieces strongly and clearly, communicating right to our hearts in ways funny, soulful and all ways full of heart.

One nitpick - the time spent at the ipad means time not directly engaging the audience, and the mix between the two feels slightly off when she'll start drawing mid-song - the joy of experiencing these songs together is to be engaged between performer and audience, and breaking the connection, however briefly, means there's a certain amount of reset that needs to happen. But O'Toole does create something beautiful out of it with personal charm and flair, and it's a fine launch for the Canberra Cabaret festival. 

Barbra: The Greatest Star, Hayes Theatre Company, Hayes Theatre, 21 Jan-14 Feb 2026

 (Photography by John McRae)

Barbra (no surname needed) is a divisive figure - too egocentric, too quirky, too much. But she's also one of the great modern divas with a distinctive personality, voice and approach. So a concert tribute to her doesn't sound like the worst idea in the world. And this is a group of talented performers putting their all into her songbook. Unfortunately, for me, it doesnt quite hit the heights, so much as the middles.

The general aesthetic feels very 1970s light-entertainment, of the type parodied by Gina Riley on "Fast Forward" when she was spoofing "The Saturday Show". The songlist, particularly in the back half, leans towards Barbra's more pop elements - "Funny Girl" gets 5 songs, but "Hello Dolly" only gets one, and there's nothing from "On a Clear Day You can See Forever" or "Funny Lady", or her broadway debut "I can get it for you wholesale" - a venue known for muscial theatre being this light on genuine musical theatre songs contributes to the "bitsy" nature of the concert. It also feels like the four talented performers - Tana Laga'aia, Laura Murphy, Stellar Perry and Brittanie Shipway - are having their very distinctive personalities swamped by Barbra - Laura Murphy is a performer who's idiosyncracies I loved in "Cry Baby" and "Shrek", and here despite showing off powerhouse pipes, she never gets to be the weirdo I wanted to see (if she'd been given "Miss Marmelstein" from "Wholesale", I bet she would have nailed it). It's well sung and mostly well delivered but it all feels a little too mid - only when it's hitting full pelt musical theatre power like a four-way-attack on  "Don't Rain On My Parade" does it really feel as powerful as it's capable of being.

Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Nicnac Productions, Old Fitz theatre, 13 Jan-7 Feb 2026

 Photography by Tony Davison

A woman is waiting in a bar, drinking her drink, when the table next to her is filled by a man with bruised knuckles and an obvious temper. Over three scenes, they meet, spend the night together and early the next morning, they look at possible lives together - despite both clearly having short fuses and a powderkeg of emotions inside that could explode both of them before too long. John Patrick Shanley's play is over 40 years old but the types it displays are familiar, damaged people who we fear could do damage to one another as easily as they could to themselves - and while it never quite tips over the edge we're left in constant tension that it could any moment. 

In some ways this play is an actor's exercise, giving them a chance to play extreme figures discovering tenderness neither are sure they deserve - but this production has found two great actors to exercise with - Jacqui Purvis and JK Kazzi are both a powerful pair of combatants and we're glued them all the way through, even during a scene-change which is a ballet of give-and-take between them. Director Nigel Turner-Carroll gives the production just the right amount of tension on its way to a surprisingly satisfying payoff. It's a minimalist production (only a little bit of furniture with a few clever lighting effects) but a powerful and engaging one.