Charlotte Smee

Opera Australia’s new world-first outdoor production of Carmen is thoroughly ambitious in more ways than one – it aims to give the artform of opera a modern, feminist, punk-rock makeover. The scene is set on a huge industrial stage on Cockatoo Island (a 15-minute ferry ride from the city), complete with dazzling fireworks, motorcycle stunts and pop-up bars. Director Liesel Badorrek places the action in a timeless “rock’n’roll space” that encapsulates rebellion and anti-establishment sentiment. This new production aims to rebel against its problematic past, bringing a new, strong, independent Carmen to the stage – as sung alternately by Opera Australia’s principal mezzo soprano Sian Sharp and Carmen Topciu. As self-professed theatre and opera nerds, Time Out was excited to speak to Badorrek and Sharp about how they’re looking to change the opera game, one rock’n’roll Carmen at a time. First, we had a chat about our mutual love of opera, and theatre, those wonderful, live participatory art forms... What is it that you love about opera?  Sian: When people experience operatic singing unamplified it is a very powerful experience that can really cut you to the quick. There's a connection there that is sometimes not achieved [with other art forms]... the power of the voice to reach out across an orchestra and hit the back wall of a 2,000-seat theatre is quite a feat. Liesel: That combination of the orchestral music and the vocals is so beautiful, it's incredibly powerful emotionally

It’s 1911. Five men trudge through a neverending barrage of snow and ice. All around them is more and more ice, unfathomably large blocks of it, and before them, they see nothing but whiteness. Only, are they actually battling a literal tundra?  Are they actually brave Antarctic explorers, or are they dealing with something else entirely? Regardless, they look a little worse for wear, their feet hurt, they don’t know where they are, and they would much rather be inside. Written by Patricia Cornelius (Shit, Love and Runt) in 2006, and finally making its mainstage debut with Sydney Theatre Company, Do Not Go Gentle follows these five “explorers” through a somewhat real and somewhat imagined journey to the South Pole. Captain Robert Falcon Scott (Philip Quast) leads his motley crew – the outspoken but rickety Evans (Peter Carroll), the navigator who can’t remember who or where she is (Brigid Zengeni), the grumpy, grieving Oates (John Gaden) and the ever-optimistic pocket rocket Wilson (Vanessa Downing). Patricia Cornelius’ sense of humour and place demands your full attention... This is the kind of play that seeps into your bones like the cold. Charles Davis’ incredible set features hills of ice, scattering snow, and a central window of a platform that at first slides open to reveal the freezing blue sky that the explorers leave behind them, and later, glimpses of reality outside the Antarctic. Davis’ brilliant costumes work as hard as the set does – Marilyn Richardson plays Mar

What kind of people would Will Truman and Grace Adler of Will & Grace fame be if they lived in present-day Sydney? The Culture, a new Australian play from Sydney-based theatre company Powersuit Productions, might have one answer. Katie (played by Laura Jackson, who also pens this work) is the kind of white feminist who asks “What would Jules [as in, Gillard] do?”. She works in marketing and wears a vulva costume to an office Halloween party. She and her gay best friend, Will (Mina Asfour), make a podcast together, live together, and lament their singledom together.  After a debut season at the Producers Club in New York, this production takes to the stage at the Flight Path Theatre in Marrickville before touring around Australia. We lay our scene in a well-furnished Sydney apartment, with a blue velveteen couch, plants and side tables galore. Every surface is laden with a stash of Katie’s favourite chocolates, Cherry Ripes, that sparkle red under the stage lights. It’s pretty lavish for a pair of twenty-something housemates, complete with a podcasting studio and wardrobes filled with bright white sneakers and pink workwear. They have a shelf full of books, but Gillard’s Not Now, Not Ever, takes pride of place on the coffee table – because these two are socially aware, of course.  It’s a rather impressive set for an indie production, however this painstaking detail is a little under-utilised. During the concise 75-minute runtime, only a few scenes actually take place in the po

If you’ve got a uterus, you’ve more than likely been asked by some well-meaning family member “when” you want to have children. “When”, not “if”, is a presumptuous adverb; implying that if you are capable of growing a baby inside you, then of course you’d like to make use of that ability. For those of us who might be career-driven, or just not particularly excited by the prospect of a bouncing bub, having a uterus involves making a series of complicated choices. Penned in the wake of the devastating overturn of Roe V Wade in the United States, Expiration Date is a new Australian play written by Lana Filies and produced by Purple Tape Productions. This hour-long two-hander dramedy starts like a rom-com and leaves you with a confronting (and also comforting?) feeling in the pit of your stomach – the recognition that you’re not the only one who constantly feels inadequate for not living your life according to the script that’s been written for you.  With just the right amount of comic relief, the play builds up towards its inevitable climax with style The premise is simple: a newly single woman (played by Lana Filies) gets trapped in an elevator with her ex-boyfriend (Flynn Mapplebeck). What follows is an hour of conversations between them that range from funny to heartbreaking, and will have you introspecting all the way home on the bus. Filies is charmingly neurotic as the eldest-daughter-type who has the impossible job of being both a woman with ambition and a family to care

It’s no secret that the “one-woman show” is in its Fleabag era. Like the avid little theatre critic that I am, I saw at least five one-person shows in the latter half of 2022 (and tried my best not to tire of them). At fringe festivals worldwide, confessional monologues written and performed by women are being lumped into the Fleabag category by critics and audiences alike (despite them only featuring a woman and some trauma). Any form of entertainment that features a woman making a wryly funny aside is eagerly compared to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s uncanny style. It was only a matter of time, then, before someone decided to bring a meta-theatrical parody sending up the old “confessional monologue” to Melbourne. And boy, does Liz Kingsman bring it. The Australian writer and performer’s One Woman Show was received on the West End with wild enthusiasm, and now she’s brought this show-within-a-show back to home shores to show us what all the fuss is about. In One Woman Show, Kingsman is messy, funny, and sexy – just like her unnamed counterpart in the monologue she performs as she tells us she’s performing it, hilariously named Wildfowl. The parallels to Fleabag are difficult to escape – with Kingsman dressed in a striped t-shirt and a black jumpsuit, like this scene of the tv show, and a singular red chair placed in the centre of the stage, like the original stage version. But this is not a “take-down” of Fleabag or a “warning” for those of us embracing our messy hot girl eras. Rat

Living in a sharehouse – it can either be horrifying, or the best thing you’ll ever do in your life. Despite my previous misgivings about shared living, I am now firmly pro-sharehouse, with some delightful housemates I am proud to call my family-away-from-family who love to do cute things like Sunday night dinners and keeping the kitchen clean. Something about living with near-strangers can be quietly special, and Lachlan Stevenson and Stacks On Theatre’s new Australian play, For the Time Being, has captured it. Stevenson writes and directs a clever, big-hearted “dead-end comedy” that follows a day in the life of four twenty-something housemates. Pat (also Stevenson) and Jack (James Thomasson) are goofy party boys, who steal tea bags, smoke cigarettes in their pyjamas and cause trouble. The shy housemate Gordy (a perfectly dorky Harlee Timms) has a forbidden crush on Vive (Brittany Santariga), who in turn is very loudly and consistently having sex with her new, no-shirt-wearing boyfriend Johnny (Kyle Barrett). It’s in the spirit of beloved tv sitcoms like New Girl, but with an Australian twist. ...a snapshot of the temporary, and deep, bonds that can only come from sharing a house with someone The action takes place on the front balcony of a quirky old house, complete with a leadlight window facing into the kitchen, a slamming screen door, a surprisingly tall Yucca plant and a dilapidated navy couch. We open (brilliantly) on a very rough-looking and sunglassed Jack, silently

Adapting a musical is no small task. There are the songs, the characters, and the storyline to think about – not to mention all the die-hard fans who will complain that they liked the original better no matter what you do, or the critics who can’t be pleased either way (no comment). But this hasn’t stopped Jay James-Moody and Squabbalogic, and thank the musical theatre gods for them. Alan Jay Lerner’s 1965 musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever is weird (and somewhat problematic) in a lot of ways. Leading lady Daisy can tell when the phone’s about to ring, and she talks to flowers to make them grow really fast. Played by Barbra Streisand in the 1970 film adaptation, she’s a gruff, ditzy fiancée who can’t shake her addiction to cigarettes. Her beau, Warren, just wants her to be “normal”. Then she meets a snobby French hypnotist who regresses her to one of her past lives: a posh, clever English woman named Melinda. Surprise surprise, the hypnotist falls in love with Melinda. But he can’t stand Daisy’s inability to, erm, have an English accent or act like a “proper” lady? Okay, Doctor. What a pleasure it is to know that Squabbalogic are finally back on stage making interesting, quirky musical theatre This version, adapted and revised by Jay James-Moody, is determined to make a few changes, similar in gender-bending but otherwise distinct from a 2011 musical adaptation by Michael Mayer. First up, it’s set in 2023, not the 1960s. Daisy is now David (whose friends call him Dais

When Edward Albee (of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf fame) was asked what his plays were “about”, he would often reply: “two hours”. Penned in the year 2000, his play The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? – in a new co-production by Sydney Theatre Company and State Theatre Company of South Australia directed by Mitchell Butel – is technically about a man who falls in love with a goat named Sylvia, much to his upper-middle-class-perfect wife and son’s dismay. But it’s “about” a lot more than that. Everything is off-kilter as soon as the curtain rises on Jeremy Allen’s set – a diagonal cross-section of a tasteful American home filled with expensive mid-century furniture and curated, fragile art objects. On the left sits a green velvet couch and on the right, there’s a brown rattan dining set. There are pristine (and probably disused) books lining floating wooden shelves on grey concrete walls. The focal point at the centre of the stage is not the back wall, but an entryway that leads to the front door; all lines pointing to escape.  A belly-hurting, brain-tickling reminder of the ridiculousness of the rules we make for ourselves Stevie (Claudia Karvan) and Martin Gray (Nathan Page) are the perfect couple, or so they keep telling each other. Their only problem in their perfect life (so far) is that their son Billy is gay, which is just a phase, or so they keep telling each other. Everything’s a witty joke to these two exemplary left-leaning Americans, including Martin’s initial confession

A musical about netballers is the kind of thing that has the potential to garner a cult following of queers. It’s only a bonus that this one is all about a netball team from the Inner West (the gayest region in Sydney) being “promoted” to an elite squad from Northern Sydney (not the straightest… but up there) and the unexpected sparks that fly between the high-ponytailed-and-perfectly-manicured Wing Attack and the bike-shorts-wearing-septum-piercing-having new Goal Shooter. Presented as part of Fruit Box Theatre’s jam-packed In Season lineup forSydney WorldPride, Nails Must be Kept Short: The Warm Up is a taster of the music and story of a new Australian musical by Sophie Davis and Laura McDonald, with music by Harry Collins. This showcase featured 12 songs, a singular drum, a keyboard played by the fantastic Zara Stanton, and a cast of eight performers giving the absolute most from behind their music stands. Developed in partnership with SOGICE (survivors of Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity Change Efforts and the LGBTQA+ Conversion movement), the musical uses the very much heteronormative cult of netball as a satirical allegory for religious and conservative movements that encourage “normality” and discourage queerness. Centre court queen Maddison (Katelin Koprivec) and her coach, Magda (Sinead Cristaudo) wear nothing but their team colours (red and white, of course) and sing about keeping far away from the other girls on the team in ‘No Contact’. Cristaudo is hilarious

The morning before the opening night of Belvoir’s first 25A* show of the year, Feminazi, I spent nearly three hours finishing Brett Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho and thinking about what the story might be like if Patrick Bateman was someone other than a straight white man who worked on Wall Street in the ’90s. Girls, gays and theys – wonder no longer. Zan the queer anti-hero is here. Zan, as played ferociously by Ziggy Resnick, hates men. They’re the kind of person who tells the audience to “fuck off” in the first few minutes of the show. She blames her father, and by extension all men, for everything bad that happens in her life – including her ill health and her problems with her girlfriend (who isn’t quite “gay enough” in Zan’s books). Zan is a gold-star lesbian. Zan is terminally online. Zan wants to kill every man in the world. Feminazi is a beautifully, unashamedly youthful queer play that isn’t afraid to get into the grittiness of self-hatred, self-discovery and misdirected androcide Playwright Laneikka Denne’s Feminazi is a chaotic ride through Zan’s brain that combines live theatre and digital aspects (with pre-recorded video components created by Parker Constantine along with Xanthe Dobbie and Roger Stonehouse) to investigate the tensions between black-and-white radical feminism and the much grey-er (rainbow-er?) spectrum of queerness.  The action takes place on an all-white stage, with a huge iPhone-like screen in the centre of the back wall (designed by Hail

Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras is many things to many people: a huge party, a parade, a joyous celebration of difference, a commercial opportunity, and a time to reflect. With the city absolutely covered in rainbows for 2023’s mammoth Sydney WorldPride celebration, it’s easy to forget that before it was any of these things, it was a riot. CAMP, a new play from Siren Theatre Co and the Seymour Centre, tells the story of the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (C.A.M.P.) one of the first gay and lesbian rights organisations to begin the fight for acceptance in Australia over 50 years ago in 1971 (at a meeting in Balmain!). Some of its bravest members were at Sydney’s first Mardi Gras protest party in 1978. Playwright Elias Jamieson Brown (Green Park) focuses this huge story through four partially fictionalised people: recently divorced and now out-lesbian single mother Jo (Tamara Natt), who joins the activists Dave (Adriano Cappelletta) and Krissy (Jane Phegan) after meeting these fellow “friends of Dorothy” at a pub. Later, Jo meets Tracy (Lou McInnes), who has recently escaped an attempt to “cure” her lesbianism at the Chelmsford psychiatric hospital (home of Dr Harry Bailey’s horrific deep sleep therapy). The action takes place on a raised stage, designed by Angelina Meany, that looks something like those you’d find in a community hall, and is built entirely of wood. A single table and an assortment of mismatched mid-century chairs create television studios, radio statio

It’s no secret that the “one-woman show” is in its Fleabag era. Like the avid  little theatre critic that I am, I saw at least five one-person shows in the latter half of 2022 (and tried my best not to tire of them). At fringe festivals across the world, confessional monologues written and performed by women are being lumped into the Fleabag category by critics and audiences alike (despite them only featuring a woman and some trauma). Any form of entertainment that features a woman making a wryly funny aside is eagerly compared to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s uncanny style. It was only a matter of time, then, before someone decided to bring a meta-theatrical parody sending up the old “confessional monologue” to the Sydney Opera House. And boy, does Liz Kingsman bring it. The Australian writer and performer’s One Woman Show was received on the West End with wild enthusiasm, and now she’s brought this show-within-a-show back to home shores to show us what all the fuss is about. In One Woman Show, Kingsman is messy, funny, and sexy – just like her unnamed counterpart in the monologue she performs as she tells us she’s performing it, hilariously named Wildfowl. The parallels to Fleabag are difficult to escape – with Kingsman dressed in a striped t-shirt and a black jumpsuit, like this scene of the tv show, and a singular red chair placed in the centre of the stage, like the original stage version. But this is not a “take-down” of Fleabag or a “warning” for those of us embracing our mes

Imagine a world where you have to pay for the privilege to pee. And no, it’s not just a European McDonald’s; it’s illegal to pee anywhere other than state-sanctioned and privately owned “Public Amenities”. There are cops named Lockstock and Barrell, a hero named Strong, a rich evil tyrant named Cladwell, some ladders, a band, an abundance of puns and a love duet for the ages – wait, is this a musical? You betcha, Little Sally. But it isn’t a happy one, and it isn’t a sappy one either. The Hayes Theatre Co is making a splash with its first show of 2023, presented in association with Heart Strings Theatre Co. Creators Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis penned Urinetown around 1999, and have borrowed so heavily from Bertolt Brecht’s (and Kurt Weill’s) Threepenny Opera that a London critic dubbed it “the Spend-a-Penny Opera”. The musical is self-aware and firmly planted in the land of the meta-theatrical, with narrator Lockstock (Karen Vickery) and Little Sally (Natasha Vickery) commenting on the action as it happens, and reactions so broad you can’t help but giggle. It never lets you forget that it’s a musical, but that’s kind of the point. ...despite all the delightful musical references, clever puns, and exciting performances, Urinetown has something bleak at its heart And the references don’t stop there, with numbers that play on West Side Story’s ‘Cool’ (in ‘Snuff that Girl’ – a highlight of the show), Les Misérables’ melodramatic minor chords, and the big chorus numbers of Hello,