Tag Archives: 4 stars

Review: The Elocution Of Benjamin Franklin (Griffin Theatre Co)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Feb 21 – Mar 29, 2026
Playwright: steve j. spears
Director: Declan Greene
Cast: Simon Burke AO
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
Robert O’Brien leads a life of deliberate seclusion, his world contained within the walls of his home where he devotes himself to the exacting art of vocal pedagogy, instructing pupils across the full spectrum of age and aspiration. The equilibrium of this carefully calibrated existence is disrupted when Benjamin—a twelve-year-old of startling precocity and unsettling sophistication—arrives to reveal himself as nothing short of prodigious. This narrative unfolds in the early 1970s, an era of terrifying peril for all who share Robert’s sexual orientation; even his most careful navigation of social propriety cannot insulate him from the devastating ease with which circumstance may turn into accusation, suspicion into ruin.

Half a century has elapsed since steve j. spears’ The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin inaugurated its world premiere upon the Sydney stage, and while the landscape of queer liberation has undergone transformation beyond measure, the play’s explorations of intolerance, prejudice, and bigotry remain as piercingly relevant as ever—a testament to the uncomfortable truth that while laws may evolve, the fundamental human capacity for cruelty and hate often endures.

Under Declan Greene’s direction, the production carries an unmistakable reverence—a profound acknowledgment of a generation for whom queerness meant navigating a world far more hostile than today’s youth might readily comprehend. The work functions, quite clearly, as homage to those forebears and elders who charted paths through terrain that could, at any moment, turn treacherous. Yet the production never settles into mere period tribute; it remains astutely attuned to the present, using its historical lens to examine the seemingly cyclical nature of persecution and the ease with which any minority can become scapegoat du jour. The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin ultimately wields considerable power in its address, even as its dramatic traction proves somewhat uneven—with individual scenes varying in their capacity to compel as the narrative unfolds.

Isabel Hudson’s production design conjures a genteel nostalgia—an aesthetic meditation upon queer history that attends with equal sensitivity to the elegiac allure being manufactured and to the precariousness underlying its surface. Lights by Brockman prove instrumental in choreographing our temporal passage, whether languorous or abrupt; its mercurial unpredictability generates a distinctly satisfying theatrical frisson. Working in intimate concert, David Bergman’s sound and music prove equally indispensable, enabling the production’s transcendence of material realities to reach the essential core of its thematic concerns.

Simon Burke AO delivers a performance of remarkable depth and emotional acuity in his portrayal of Robert. Whether navigating registers of flippant vivacity or mortal gravity, he maintains a presence at once reassuring and undeniably sincere—radiating a warmth that secures our attentive vulnerability, rendering us receptive to the excavation of a queer historical epoch that demands our permanent remembrance.

Just when one might have reasonably supposed our community could begin to shift its focus from old battles to new horizons, these last forty-eight hours have delivered via the news, harrowing accounts of violence against young gay men—assaults whose contours bear chilling resemblance to those that recurred with grim regularity before decriminalisation, before marriage equality, before any number of legislative milestones we imagined might signal lasting change.

It is clear that legal frameworks, however essential, cannot alone dismantle the deeper machinations of prejudice. The same streets that witnessed violence decades ago continue to witness it still; the same fear that coursed through gay men navigating public space in the previous century courses through their counterparts today. Progress, for all its genuine achievements, does not move in an unbroken forward trajectory. It stalls, it falters, and sometimes it reveals itself to be far more fragile than we wish to believe. Hate crimes against queer people are not anachronisms—they are the present, demanding we reckon with how much remains undone.

www.griffintheatre.com.au 

Review: Es & Flo (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Feb 13 – 28, 2026
Playwright: Jennifer Lunn
Director: Emma Canalese
Cast: Annie Byron, Eloise Snape, Fay Du Chateau, Erika Ndibe, Charlotte Salusinszky
Images by Robert Catto

Theatre review
Esme has turned seventy-one, and the encroachment of dementia is becoming unmistakable. Her de facto partner of thirty-six years, Flo, remains steadfast in her commitment to care for Esme at home. Yet Esme’s son, asserting familial authority, is equally resolved to relocate her to an aged care facility. In Es & Flo, Jennifer Lunn examines a predicament all too familiar to many same-sex couples of a certain generation: the systematic erasure of their relationships by both kin and legal institutions, stripping them of companionship and patrimony precisely when bodily decline renders them most vulnerable.

It is a deeply affecting work, one that, under Emma Canalese’s astute direction, strikes precisely the right register to resonate with its audience, delivering a theatrical experience at once moving and meaningful. Annie Byron is particularly compelling as Esme, capturing with remarkable subtlety the complex metamorphoses that accompany the advance of age. Her portrayal of authentic tenderness toward her partner does much to render their bond credible, thereby securing the audience’s emotional investment in the narrative. Fay Du Chateau’s Flo truly comes into her own as the drama intensifies, revealing layers of fortitude and vulnerability. The supporting ensemble—Eloise Snape, Erika Ndibe, and Charlotte Salusinszky—likewise distinguishes itself, bringing thoughtfulness and nuance to every moment.

Soham Apte’s set design evokes a recognisable domestic sphere even as its spatial demarcations permit scenes to unfold with fluidity. Alice Vance’s costuming conjures persuasive archetypes while conferring upon the stage a distinct, understated elegance. Luna Ng’s lighting, though never ostentatious, illuminates each interaction with precision, calibrated to elicit the requisite emotional response from an audience confronting a narrative at once tender and consequential.

The love between the two elders in Es & Flo is rendered as indissoluble, yet even now such unions remain perpetually imperilled. Statutory equality and the legal recognition of same-sex marriage have not extinguished the social dynamics capable of sundering these bonds—particularly when queer individuals advance into infirmity and can no longer safeguard their own interests. Equality on paper is but a parchment promise unless the circle of kinship closes around us, unless the community becomes armour against the gathering dark of our final queer years.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au | www.mitodoproductions.com

Review: The Normal Heart (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Sydney Opera House (Sydney NSW), Feb 9 – Mar 14, 2026
Playwright: Larry Kramer
Director: Dean Bryant
Cast: Nicholas Brown, Mitchell Butel, Tim Draxl, Michael Griffiths, Emma Jones, Evan Lever, Keiynan Lonsdale, Fraser Morrison, Mark Saturno
Images by Neil Bennett

Theatre review
The story begins in 1981, at the very dawn of the AIDS crisis that would devastate gay communities around the world. As a marginalised group, attempts to secure recognition and support proved extraordinarily difficult. Yet the indefatigable activist Ned Weeks refuses to accept indifference or rejection, as vividly portrayed in Larry Kramer’s seminal work, The Normal Heart.

Written four decades ago and drawing heavily on Kramer’s own experiences, the play arrives from a vastly different social and medical landscape. Encouragingly, much has changed — not only in the treatment and understanding of the disease itself, but also in the broader recognition of gay rights. As a result, the work can at times feel overtly expositional to contemporary audiences. However, as a historical lens on one of the most defining public health and social crises of modern life, it remains deeply significant, even if not always uniformly resonant.

Dean Bryant’s direction delivers a production of fitting urgency, capturing the emotional temperature of the era and offering a clear sense of what it meant to work on the front lines of the fight for HIV and AIDS to be taken seriously. It is a passionate and deeply sincere staging, imbued with a palpable sense of commitment, even if it does not always sustain meaningful engagement.

The cast is led by Mitchell Butel, who brings admirable presence and authenticity to the role of Weeks, grounding a story that continues to demand retelling. Powerful monologues are delivered with memorable force by performers such as Emma Jones, Tim Draxl, and Evan Lever, each contributing striking moments of dramatic intensity.

Production designer Jeremy Allen underscores the desperation of the era with a set that appears subtly worn and frayed at the edges, quietly reflecting a world under strain. His costumes evoke the textures of early-1980s gay culture, with characters embodying the archetypal looks and sensibilities we now associate with that period.

Nigel Levings’ lighting is largely unobtrusive, allowing the performances to remain the focal point, before gently asserting itself in key moments — particularly towards the conclusion — when a more overt sentimentality emerges. Cellist Rowena Macneish provides live accompaniment of extraordinary sensitivity, her playing elegantly underscoring the production’s most powerful emotional currents.

While antiretroviral therapies have transformed HIV/AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition, The Normal Heart endures as an indictment of institutional indifference—a reminder that political structures remain perilously susceptible to abandoning their most vulnerable constituents. We entrust governing bodies with the intricate machinery of public welfare, yet those who wield power frequently subordinate communal wellbeing to private interests, ideological rigidity, or bureaucratic inertia. The disquieting symmetry between Kramer’s era and our own is difficult to ignore: in Sydney mere days ago, state violence was deployed against citizens exercising their right to dissent, while across the Pacific, democratic institutions in the United States appear to be unravelling with vertiginous momentum. Larry Kramer waged his battles until his final breath; his unyielding moral clarity demands not our nostalgia, but our emulation.

www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Review: Purpose (Sydney Theatre Company)

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Venue: Wharf 1 Sydney Theatre Company (Walsh Bay NSW), Feb 2 – Mar 22, 2026
Playwright: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Director: Zindzi Okenyo
Cast: Grace Bentley-Tsibuah, Deni Gordon, Markus Hamilton, Tinashe Mangwana, Maurice Marvel Meredith, Sisi Stringer
Images by Prudence Upton

Theatre review
The Jaspers of Chicago are a prominent family, with patriarch Solomon having left an indelible mark on American history as a luminary of the Civil Rights movement and a pillar of his community, counting Dr Martin Luther King Jr. among his many friends. Yet, at some point, things began to unravel.

In Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Purpose, we witness how a legacy can be tarnished, in a story that explores broken dreams, misplaced faith, and the quiet dangers of human complacency. As we discover that the Jaspers are not who they are believed to be, we are confronted with the illusory nature of celebrity and reputation, and reminded that true democratic agency — and personal destiny — ultimately demands individual vigilance and control.

It is a sensational piece of writing, rich with humour and sharp insight, and driven by a plot that is thrillingly unpredictable. Zindzi Okenyo’s direction keeps the audience riveted as each dramatic surprise unfolds with sustained force. Under her guidance, the relationships feel fully realised and believable, allowing us to invest deeply in the complex dynamics at play.

The cast is broadly likeable, if somewhat uneven, with Markus Hamilton leaving the strongest impression, delivering a mesmerisingly profound performance as Solomon. His daughter-in-law Morgan is brought to life by a remarkable Grace Bentley-Tsibuah, who is magnificent in her intensity, inhabiting a role brimming with resentment, rage, and defiance.

Production design by Jeremy Allen creates a Jasper residence that feels suitably traditional and respectable, its windows looking out onto heavy, persistent snowfall that quietly reinforces the play’s sense of place. Lighting by Kelsey Lee shifts in subtle gradations to mirror changes in mood, while consistently flattering and revealing the nuances of each character.

James Peter Brown’s score enters sparingly, transporting us into something more ethereal between the very grounded disputes that form the scintillating emotional core of Purpose. The effect is to create moments of distance and reflection, as though inviting us to consider these deeply human interactions with greater objectivity.

It is natural to have political heroes, but they should serve as sources of inspiration rather than saintly figures upon whom we pin all our hopes and dreams. Solomon may have achieved a great deal in his lifetime, yet we must remember that political projects are never truly complete; they are ongoing, unfinished, and constantly contested.

The systems in which we operate are often made to feel beyond our control, with power appearing distant and elusive. In truth, these structures are bendable and mutable, if only we push harder to exercise our democratic rights and restore faith in the power of collective action — especially in an age marked by the rise of reprehensible authoritarianism and heinous oligarchic influence.

Review: Takatāpui (Trans Theatre Festival)

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Venue: Carriageworks (Eveleigh NSW), Jan 10 – 15, 2026
Playwright: Daley Rangi
Cast: Daley Rangi
Image by Alec Council

Theatre review
The show opens with the artist preparing to head out for a date. Poised before a mirror and confronted by his own reflection, it becomes clear that what is being rehearsed is less a social ritual than a state of psychological readiness—an attempt to negotiate self-doubt as much as appearance. Daley Rangi’s Takatāpui is a one-person work that interrogates otherness and marginalisation. Rangi occupies multiple positions of difference: Māori within a predominantly white world, and visibly queer within a milieu structured by heteronormativity. Almost inevitably, the work unfolds as a meditation on isolation and loneliness, tracing the quiet distances that emerge when identity is continually rendered peripheral.

Takatāpui is threaded with humour, though its gravity is never in doubt. Rangi’s magnetism holds the audience in effortless thrall across the hour-long duration, his lucid embodiment of complex emotional states lending a visceral clarity to the poetic language he deploys with such quiet authority. What emerges is a portrait of profound vulnerability tempered by considerable strength: in his reflections on being brown and trans, Rangi articulates a narrative of injustice that resonates deeply, not as abstraction but as lived experience, felt and shared in the room.

It is striking that, despite being staged within the starkest of settings—an empty stage anchored only by a microphone stand outfitted with small electronic contraptions—the production’s lighting and sound design are intricately conceived and exuberantly realised. These elements do far more than support the action: they actively extend and enrich the storytelling. The resulting sensorial depth comes as a welcome surprise, amplifying the work’s theatricality and lending a layered, immersive quality to what might otherwise read as austere minimalism.

Takatāpui is written from a place of profound personal intimacy, offering perspectives and experiences that are singular and unrepeatable. That human beings possess a means by which such interiority can be shared at all is something to be cherished and fiercely defended. Art may be intrinsic to our species, yet it remains fragile—perpetually vulnerable to being sidelined, muted, or censored. In the present moment, artists have become increasingly rare, and alarmingly, this scarcity is met with a troubling complacency: an acceptance that human endeavour should be reduced to the bare logic of economic survival. To relegate art to the realm of the rarefied, to treat it as a luxury rather than a necessity, is both a disgrace and a danger. In doing so, we risk forfeiting our capacity to apprehend meaning, complexity, and truth itself.

www.greendoortheatrecompany.com

Review: Dial M For Murder (Ensemble Theatre)

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Venue: Ensemble Theatre (Kirribilli NSW), Nov 28, 2025 – Jan 11, 2026
Playwright: Jeffrey Hatcher (from the original by Frederick Knott)
Director: Mark Kilmurry
Cast: Garth Holcombe, Madeleine Jones, Kenneth Moraleda, Anna Samson, David Soncin
Images by Phil Erbacher

Theatre review
Margot is conducting an affair, unaware that her husband Tony is quietly engineering her murder. Yet in Dial M for Murder, even the most meticulous schemes refuse to unfold as intended, giving rise to a cascade of unforeseen twists. Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Frederick Knott’s seminal play and film may not conform to the conventions of a traditional whodunnit, but it possesses all the hallmarks of an investigative classic—suspenseful, cunningly constructed, and keeping us on tenterhooks as we strain to anticipate its final reckoning.

Marvellously taut direction from Mark Kilmurry, laced with a gentle, sly humour, yields a thoroughly engaging night at the theatre. While Kilmurry’s treatment of this 1952 tale is not especially inventive, it has no difficulty holding us captive throughout. Each plot revelation is unveiled with delectable finesse, delivering the kind of satisfaction that reminds us why this genre endures so effortlessly.

Nick Fry’s handsome set design allows for fluid, elegant movement, while presenting a sophisticated colour palette that evokes the period yet remains visually appealing. His costumes, impeccably realised, convincingly embody the refinement of the English upper class. Matt Cox’s lighting, with its warm amber glow, flatters the stage picture and injects a quietly simmering dramatic tension. Madeleine Picard’s music, lush and evocative of mid-century cinema, proves sumptuous throughout, ever attuned to deepening the atmosphere of intrigue.

Anna Samson and Garth Holcombe embody, with remarkable acuity, a couple burdened by secrets. Both deliver finely detailed performances that steer the narrative through its dizzying succession of twists, offering a delectable touch of extravagance that never tips into excess. Madeleine Jones and David Soncin provide compelling support, but it is Kenneth Moraleda’s turn as Inspector Hubbard that proves especially irresistible. He infuses the role with a distinctive quirkiness, lending the production an added spark that elevates its overall charm. At the end, the production is an excellent reminder of how perversely delightful it can be to revel in a story woven from such unabashedly heinous acts.

www.ensemble.com.au

Review: The Seagull (KXT on Broadway)

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Venue: KXT on Broadway (Ultimo NSW), Nov 21 – Dec 6, 2025
Playwright: Saro Lusty-Cavallari (after Anton Chekhov)
Director: Saro Lusty-Cavallari
Cast: Talia Benatar, Kath Gordon, Jason Jefferies, Deborah Jones, Saro Lepejian, Tim McGarry, Brendan Miles, Shan-Ree Tan, Alexandra Travers
Images by Robert Miniter

Theatre review
In Saro Lusty-Cavallari’s adaptation of The Seagull, the action is deftly relocated from late-19th-century Russia to the 2020 COVID lockdown in Bellingen, an idyllic township north of Sydney. Chekhov’s characters preserve their familiar longings and disappointments, and in this contemporary reframing it becomes unmistakably clear that the disillusionment of young theatrical hopefuls like Konstantin and Nina is far from an antiquated concern. Lusty-Cavallari reveals a marked vulnerability in this iteration of the classic, offering transparent glimpses of autobiography woven through an updated tale that engages meaningfully with the inner workings—and inner wounds—of Sydney’s theatre world.

Although its context is reimagined, this production maintains a striking fidelity to Chekhov’s spirit, arriving—somewhat unexpectedly—at a tone that feels almost traditional for a genre no longer in vogue. Lusty-Cavallari’s exuberant humour, threaded generously throughout, reshapes a well-worn tale of existential drift into something distinctly bittersweet, and, thankfully, thoroughly engaging and enjoyable.

Konstantin is rendered with remarkable intricacy by Saro Lepejian, who layers nuance upon nuance to create a character of great authenticity and warmth, allowing us to grasp him with unusual depth and familiarity. Alexandra Travers is equally compelling as Nina, lifting the archetype of the innocent ingénue into a figure of luminous humanity; her final scenes prove disarmingly profound and affecting under Travers’ interpretation. Also notable is Tim McGarry’s wonderfully idiosyncratic Pyotr, delivered with exquisite comic timing and an assured lightness of touch, earning some of the production’s most memorable laughs.

Kate Beere’s set and costume design provides elegant, uncluttered solutions that allow the intricate emotional dynamics to remain firmly in view. Aron Murray’s lighting is exquisitely attuned to each fluctuation in tone, guiding us seamlessly into not only the work’s dramatic intensities but also its well-timed moments of levity, which together render the production genuinely delightful.

It may feel incongruous to watch Chekhov’s characters driven to the point of shooting themselves in a contemporary Australian setting, yet the deep-seated malaise that fuels such despair remains clearly recognisable in our present moment. These upper-middle-class figures seem perpetually unable to attain what they long for, even as they dismiss what is already theirs—a conundrum that, now more than ever, echoes uncomfortably through many of our own lives.

www.kingsxtheatre.com | www.montaguebasement.com

Review: The True History Of The Life And Death Of King Lear & His Three Daughters (Belvoir St Theatre)

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Venue: Belvoir St Theatre (Surry Hills NSW), Nov 15, 2025 – Jan 4, 2026
Playwright: William Shakespeare
Director: Eamon Flack
Cast: Ahunim Abebe, Peter Carroll, Tom Conroy, James Fraser, Charlotte Friels, Colin Friels, Raj Labade, Brandon McClelland, Conor Merrigan-Turner, Sukhbir (Sunny) Singh Walia, Alison Whyte, Charles Wu, Jana Zvedeniuk
Images by Brett Boardman

Theatre review
The “orange menace” has been re-elected, ruling from the White House with narcissism more brazen than ever, even as he appears to drift into senility on the cusp of eighty. We may be tempted to call these times unprecedentedly strange, yet Shakespeare wrote King Lear centuries ago—proof enough that the spectacle of a deluded sovereign is hardly new. Perhaps it is merely our overly idealistic sensibilities that persuade us that today’s disorder is somehow exceptional.

Directed by Eamon Flack and bearing the charmingly elaborate title The True History of the Life and Death of King Lear & His Three Daughters, this production is an unambiguous showcase of exceptional performance, even if its visual world feels short on ambition. Bob Cousins’ set design and James Stibilj’s costumes appear deliberately nondescript, yet their quiet elegance remains unmistakable. The music, however, is a sheer delight: intricately composed by Steve Francis and Arjunan Puveendran, with live accompaniment that draws out every atmospheric nuance, pulling us wholly into the narrative at each turn.

Leading man Colin Friels inhabits the psyche of the titular character with unwavering conviction, offering a performance marked by sustained authenticity, even if he does not always command the stage with equal magnetism. It is, perhaps, the supporting cast who linger more vividly in the mind, many of them seizing their moments with flashes of astonishing brilliance that hold us rapt. Raj Labade as Edmund, Brandon McClelland as Kent, and Alison Whyte as Gloucester, to name but a few, distinguish themselves with performances whose precision and vitality give the production much of its dramatic force.

It was, after all, in this very year of 2025 that we witnessed the emergence of the No Kings movement and the two massive protests it inspired. We need no elaborate justification for its urgency, but King Lear seems to articulate perfectly our present sentiments with tragic precision. In its portrait of power unmoored from wisdom, the play reminds us that the call to dismantle the crown is not a novelty of our age, but a lesson humanity keeps forgetting—until the kingdom burns again.

www.belvoir.com.au

Review: Castrati (Old Fitz Theatre)

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Venue: Old Fitzroy Theatre (Woolloomooloo NSW), Nov 11 – 16, 2025
Creator: Kit Spencer
Director: Tyler Diaz
Cast: Kit Spencer
Images by Patrick Phillips

Theatre review
Kit Spencer’s Castrati examines the three-hundred-year phenomenon of Italy’s castrati, originating in the 16th century, while placing it in dialogue with his own trajectory as transgender and a singer. What first appears as a shared limitation—the absence of lower notes—opens into a richer field of correspondences: bodies reshaped by necessity or desire, and masculinities continually reimagined at their edges. It is within these echoing transformations that Spencer locates the wellspring of his fascination.

Spencer’s writing is genuinely captivating, blending deeply honest introspection with carefully reasoned analysis. Presented with an ease of coherence yet enriched by striking complexity, Castrati proves as informative as it is engaging. Under Tyler Dias’s direction, the production channels its emotions with fervour while maintaining meticulous attention to the wealth of historical and cultural detail it brings to light.

The experience is further enriched by the formidable talents of music producer Lunar Martins, who seamlessly fuses electronic textures with traditional forms in her reinterpretations of arias by composers such as Vivaldi and Handel. Jas Borsovsky’s lighting design heightens the drama while infusing the stage with a sense of transcendent beauty, and Annika Victoria’s video projections contribute a playful exuberance through their cleverly orchestrated digital tableaux.

As performer, Spencer is raw yet remarkably sincere and endearing, bringing both vulnerability and conviction to the stage in a manner that secures our investment from the outset. The ideas he introduces span a wide terrain, as though enacting a deliberate resistance to having his thoughts reduced to anything simple or neatly contained.

Together with Spencer, we mourn the reality that boys as young as seven were compelled to sacrifice so profoundly in service of an aesthetic ideal imposed by the culture that claimed to cherish them. We are then invited to consider the men they became, and the unending challenges that must have accompanied lives shaped so drastically by those physical modifications. Although the castrato has been outlawed for more than a century, our bodies and identities continue to be pressured into conformity. For trans people, especially, the grind of enduring other people’s rigid notions of gender remains a persistent and often exhausting struggle. In the end, history reminds us that the highest notes often come from the deepest wounds.

www.oldfitztheatre.com.au

Review: The Lovers (Theatre Royal)

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Venue: Theatre Royal (Sydney NSW), Oct 31 – Nov 16, 2025
Book, Music & Lyrics: Laura Murphy
Director: Nick Skubu
Cast: Natalie Abbott, Jason Arrow, Jayme-Lee Hanekom, Loren Hunter, Stellar Perry, Mat Verevis
Images by Joel Devereux

Theatre review
Helena loves Demetrius, who only has eyes for Hermia, who happens to fancy Lysander—who, luckily, fancies her back. Into this romantic tangle stumble Oberon and Puck, whose antics send the entire affair spiralling into chaos. In The Lovers, Laura Murphy reimagines Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a pop-fuelled rom-com, and it proves a stroke of brilliance. Murphy’s songs are crafted with such wit and precision that an otherwise frivolous love polygon becomes something exuberant and uplifting—a celebration of desire, confusion, and the sheer delight of losing oneself in both.

Nick Skubij’s direction leans into the work’s pop sensibilities, resulting in a production that feels consistently sweet and effervescent. At times, his approach may lack a certain inventiveness or sense of play, yet there is an undeniable momentum that keeps the show engaging throughout. Isabel Hudson’s set and costumes are tasteful but somewhat pared back for a story so gleefully fantastical. Fortunately, Trent Suidgeest’s lavish lighting design and David Bergman’s refined video projections lend the staging a grandeur that transforms it into something visually majestic and memorable.

We meet a superbly cohesive cast of six, each performer brimming with talent and conviction. Natalie Abbott’s Helena and Stellar Perry’s Oberon prove especially magnetic—both returning from the 2022 production with a mastery that infuses every scene with confidence and flair. The vocal work throughout is first-rate, and under Heidi Maguire’s deft musical direction, the show achieves a gleam of polish that ensures it is the songs, above all, that continue to echo long after the curtain falls.

www.theloversmusical.com.au