Our latest Sydney theatre reviews

It’s impossible to make everyone happy. Indeed, when it comes to meeting the appetites of musical theatre fans in Sydney, it’s a tall order at the best of times. This year, Sydney’s major stages have been pumping out the busiest theatre calendar we’ve seen since pre-pandemic times. However, aside from some notable exceptions, many of the productions claiming the lion’s share of the flashy budgets and the big stars are nothing we haven’t seen before. Musicals like Chicago, Grease, and Rocky Horror are fun and all – but they’ve been done more times than we care to remember, and discerning theatre lovers have a nose for when something is mainly getting a re-mount for cynical commercial gain (allegedly), rather than artistic merit.  Enter, an unlikely saving grace – Sister Act: A Divine Musical Comedy. Sure, the story is a familiar one, inspired by the hit early ’90s comedy movie of the same name starring Whoopi Goldberg (who was also involved in creating the original production). However, this is the first time that this screen-to-stage production has appeared on an Aussie stage. This fun and vibrant show gives you all the razzle dazzle you could want from a night at the theatre – and it blankets the Capitol Theatre in a dazzling cascade of disco ball beams, to boot.  If you’re looking for a feel-good theatrical outing with plenty of sparkles, then let this show take you to church. Leaning into a Motown-inspired brand of ’70s disco, soul, and funk rhythms, this show harnesses or

The below review was written about the previous 2024 season of Julia at the Sydney Opera House.***** When Julia Gillard’s distinctive ocker voice first emerged from Justine Clarke’s mouth on Opening Night of Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Julia, the audience literally gasp-screamed. It was, without mincing words, pretty freaky.  STC’s production of Julia is a long-awaited response to one of the most iconic (and spicy) speeches made in Australian history. Written by Joanna Murray Smith, directed by Sarah Goodes, and starring national treasure Justine Clarke as Julia Gillard herself, this deeply Australian story is an amorphous re-imagining of all the forces that led up to that moment in 2012 when Julia Gillard so perfectly and viscously roasted Tony Abbott in the House of Representatives.  Julia is an intoxicating and fascinating experience that hits something deep and resounding within us We all know *that speech* (and if you don’t, watch it right now). It was a moment that stopped the internet and hearts all over the world. Gillard’s masterful use of rage gave voice to the invisible fury of millions of women who have spent a millennia not being taken seriously. The power of ‘the speech’ has made it a thing of legend, setting the stakes high for anyone trying to recreate it. However, now, in Julia, the creators have managed (mostly) to pull it off.  This play tries to start at the very beginning. We are taken deep into Gillard’s childhood as the child of Welsh parents

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived… Holy Six! Australia can’t get enough of Six the Musical. The pop-powered global phenomenon has already had multiple record-breaking seasons across the country. And now, due to popular demand, the disgraced wives of King Henry VIII are warming up their voices for another lap Down Under. The tour is kicking off at Melbourne’s Comedy Theatre from August 2024, before hitting the Sydney stage at the Theatre Royal from October 2024, and bringing it home at QPAC’s Playhouse in Brisbane from January 2025.  Have you had enough of modern royal gossip? Hanging your head in shame over those cracks about Princess Kate secretly getting a BBL? Distract yourself with this modern twist on British Tudor history, it’s packed with pop bangers so catchy that they’ll flush any other thoughts out of your head. As our critic described it in their four-star review: “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 the vibe. More like an 80-minute concert than a traditional musical, Six has become a cultural phenomenon since its premiere in 2017, redefining the boundaries of musical theatre and engaging audiences of all ages. Every year, it is seen by over 3.5 million people worldwide.  The premise is sort of hilarious: all six women who married old mate Henry are forming a pop band, and they’re battling it out to determine who will be crowned the lea

Your own private jet to take you around the world, perhaps to one of the many homes you own. A designer wardrobe and the latest technology to match. You spend your days being adored and your evenings at the hottest restaurants and clubs, where your every whim is catered to. These are the fantasies of stardom that most of us have indulged in at some point in our lives. Even knowing the heavy price many celebrities pay can’t tarnish the allure of such a heady dream.  Sunset Boulevard – now on at the Sydney Opera House after debuting at Melbourne's Princess Theatre in May this year – juxtaposes the idealism and dreams of youth against the mercenary nature of Hollywood, where people are used and discarded once they lose their value. In this new Opera Australia and GWB Entertainment production, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s theatrical score is deftly and beautifully handled by musical director Paul Christ and the Opera Australia orchestra; repetition of motifs is used to pull us back and forth between these two worlds. A chance meeting between struggling writer Joe Gillis (played by Tim Draxl) and forgotten silent film star Norma Desmond (Sarah Brightman) asks the question, “what happens when the spotlight fades?” Initially opportunistic, Joe quickly finds himself losing control of his life as he’s pulled further and further into Norma’s delusions and learns just how addictive fame can be.  The musical is a faithful adaptation of Billy Wilder’s iconic 1950 film, although this sometimes wo

In Matthew Whittet’s Seventeen, five teens spend the night in a park after their last day of high school, celebrating the end of adolescence. Among the wooden playground equipment (monuments to that unreclaimable era) they drink from a communal bench, keep an eye out for the ranger, and flicker in that twilight limbo between what they’ve lived, and what’s to come – who they were, and who they hope to be. Perhaps for the last time together, they stand on the sheer cliff of a vast unknown. Their whole lives are ahead of them – only their secrets hold them back. The 17-year-olds (and one kid sister) are played by Di Smith, Katrina Foster, Di Adams, Noel Hodda, Peter Kowitz and Colin Moody. These veterans of the stage are definitely not 17 though, not even close. Assuming AI doesn’t crack the mortality problem any time soon, most of their lives are behind them. Faces seamed and voices hoary, they perform the gaucheness of youth. First staged almost ten years ago by Belvoir St Theatre before it went on to garner critical acclaim in the UK, this is Seventeen’s first major Sydney revival. Who were you when you were seventeen? Do you recognise that person? Would they recognise you?  I confess that, before even seeing this play, I had felt a great, anticipatory, existential sob bubbling up in me. I break down at the chorus of London Grammar’s ‘Wasting My Young Years’. Every morning, I smear a home-made mask of flaxseed, honey and turmeric on my face because a TikTok charlatan told me

If Sydney’s stages are anything to go by, gothic literature is all the rage. Just as we’ve closed the book on the final chapter of Kip Williams’ thematic cine-theatre trilogy with STC, the national tour of Shake & Stir Theatre Co’s new adaptation of Frankenstein has arrived at the Theatre Royal. This new take on Mary Shelley’s none-more-seminal 1818 novel continues to divide critics, and for this writer, it brings to mind a couple of other notable literary adaptations, specifically two key moments. One is from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings where, upon being offered the One Ring by Frodo, Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel muses that she would become “…beautiful and terrible”. You could say that this version of Frankenstein is both of those things. The other is from David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, based on the graphic novel by John Wagner and Vince Locke – after his goons fail to kill Viggo Mortensen’s regular fella murder machine, mob boss William Hurt muses, “How do you f**k that up?” So far, an answer has not been forthcoming. It all starts so promisingly, too, as the prow of a ship looms towards the audience through a dense fog, and we’re dropped into the novel’s Arctic-set framing device – an element rarely explored in most adaptations outside of Kenneth Branagh’s muddled and histrionic 1994 film (this production owes many debts to Branagh’s). There, explorer Captain Robert Walton (Nick James) finds anguished scientist Victor Frankenstein (Darcy Brown), near death