Sydney theatre latest reviews

In one unassuming corner of Sydney’s corporate high-end Barangaroo, a temporary portal to a strange and fantastical realm has materialised. It holds its curious tear in the everyday order through the Department of Legend and Myth; a new bar filled with cocktails, magic and quirky decor, now serving as the threshold extension to the mystery world that lies within. Take a tipple from the bar under neon pink clouds, become pleasantly unmoored from your day with a resident DJ’s serene poppy beats, and then, your journey begins. And oh, how it unfolds is up to you. Eternityland is Sydney’s newest large-scale immersive theatre adventure, brought to us from Danielle Harvey, the director of the acclaimed A Midnight Visit (another production to score an elusive four-stars from us). Where A Midnight Visit was concocted from the life and legacy of Edgar Allan Poe, spuming gothic madness and morbid hysteria, Eternityland is a delirium populated by the idea of the hero: a figure variously mad, noble, tragic, triumphant, misunderstood, overlooked and absurd. It is a vast delirium of many vaults and chambers, with a dizzying two storeys and twenty rooms drenched with Eternityland’s electric, acid-popping dream. Each is more bizarre and captivating than the last, and each invites the curious to explore its secrets and activate its pleasures. Within these rooms, strangely clad warriors, kings, and feminist badasses enchant us with their skills (from circus and cabaret, to music and storytelli

Moulin Rouge! The Musical has finally made its dazzling debut in Sydney, and everyone's invited. The costumes are glittering masterpieces, the staging is the most sumptuous and marvellous you’re ever likely to see, the dance numbers are dynamic and technically flawless, and each and every performer is worth their weight in diamonds. From the moment you enter the theatre, the scene is set. The neoclassical interior of the Capitol Theatre has been transformed into Paris’ most exciting burlesque club, the Moulin Rouge, with red velvet drapes and chandeliers leaping out from the stage, which is flanked by a customary red windmill and a humongous blue elephant. It is well worth taking your seat early for this show, as the ensemble seductively linger around the theatre and wind around go-go dancer cages to set the sultry mood. The show opens with a bang, as a troupe of “Lady M’s” – aka Nini, Chocolat, Babydoll and Arabia (Samantha Dodemaide, Ruva Ngwenya, Christopher Scalzo and Olivia Vásquez) – performs ‘Welcome to the Moulin Rouge’, the famous medley featuring the movie’s biggest hit song, ‘Lady Marmalade’. It’s not hard to see why this production took out no less than ten Tony Awards in 2021. The first Australian-produced musical to open on Broadway, Moulin Rouge! also became the first Australian-produced show to win a Tony for best musical, beating Jagged Little Pill and Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. The show’s arrival in Sydney is also a homecoming of sorts; it is of course

Risky experimentation is central to Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous 1886 gothic thriller, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – it is also the creative impetus behind Hayes Theatre Co’s Australian premiere production of Jekyll and Hyde the Musical. Genre switches, dynamic casting choices, multiple roles, minimalism – it requires some surrender from the audience. But if you’re prepared to lay aside preconceptions, you’ll be rewarded in spades.  The very notion of staging Jekyll and Hyde inside the diminutive dimensions of the Hayes Theatre seems bonkers. The show is usually mounted with a grand late 19th century setting and costumes on par with The Phantom of the Opera or Sweeney Todd. The Hayes’ version uses a single setting – the bland, two-tone ward of the post-WWII St Jude’s Military Asylum. Yet it works – as long as you’re prepared to use some imagination.  Premiering in 1990, Jekyll and Hyde the Musical was written by Leslie Bricusse, probably best known for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Frank Wildhorn (whose credits include the hit song ‘Where Do Broken Hearts Go’ by Whitney Houston). Jekyll and Hyde is operatic in style, similar to the aforementioned Phantom and Sweeney Todd. Its breakout hit is ‘This is the Moment’, an anthemic ballad often sung by reality show contestants whose moment dies soon after. Acclaimed cabaret artist/pop singer/songwriter/actor and local queer icon Brendan Maclean makes his musical theatre debut playing the lead role of Je

Update, Jul 25 2022: the return Sydney season of Alanis Morisette’s rip roaring rockin' musical will end early. The producers said in a statement: "Despite glowing reviews, rapturous audiences and the tenacity, talent and commitment of our company, due to the combination of the new covid wave and uncertain operating conditions, we have made the difficult decision to close the Sydney run on 14 August and suspend the planned tour." "We will continue to tell the Jagged Little Pill story – with the North American tour commencing in August, and productions planned in the UK and Asia — and remain committed to finding a way to bring this vibrant and vitalizing musical back to the Australian stage. We want to thank our company for their courage, talent and brilliance, and the audiences who have experienced Jagged over the past six months.” All ticket holders for performances after August 14 will be contacted by their point of purchase. Read on for our four-star review:  While it is, on paper, a jukebox musical in the same vein as Mamma Mia! or We Will Rock You, the red-raw, heart-on-her-sleeve lyrics from Alanis Morisette’s generation-defining album allow for a far richer narrative to emerge in Jagged Little Pill. It tells the story of an American family coming apart at the seams, and weaves in a tapestry of urgent social issues. But it's also a show about the hope that springs from facing such challenges, and that’s surely something to cling onto. All the hits of the Canadian singer

August 3, 2022: Six the Musical is returning to Sydney for an encore season form August 26-September 25. Read our review of the first run below:  What if the Spice Girls did a concept album about King Henry VIII’s wives and Baz Luhrmann directed the concert video? That, in a nutshell, is Six’s vibe: an up-tempo, empowering, all-singing, all-dancing account of the lives of the six key ladies in the Tudor monarch’s orbit. Much like Hamilton before it, the pop musical is making history buffs out of legions of musical theatre tragics, and making musical theatre tragics out of pop and hip hop lovers.  The conceptual space is a rock concert with the wives reimagined as a girl group bickering over who will get to be lead singer. It’s decided that whoever suffered enough at the hands of their mutual ex should take the crown, as it were, and so the six compete with their tales of woe, told as irresistibly catchy dance floor bangers. Conceived by Brits Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss in 2017, the pair having penned the show while they were studying at Cambridge, and here directed by Moss and Jamie Armitage, Six is almost the platonic ideal of a modern high end musical: a clever concept packed to the brim with instantly familiar tunes, wrapped in colourful but clean production design and costuming, and clocking in at an audience-friendly 75 minutes.  It’s not a jukebox musical, but it kind of feels like one – songs such as ‘Ex Wives’ and the triumphant, show-topping ‘Megasix’ are finely calib