Our latest Sydney theatre reviews

This is it, we have found the yassification of Shakespeare. Fuelled by a playlist of certified pop hits, this jukebox romp billed as “the greatest love story ever remixed” poses a simple but provocative question: What if, instead of joining Romeo in eternal slumber, Juliet decided to live? A contagiously joyous musical spectacular, & Juliet has finally landed at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre after being met with critical acclaim on Broadway and the West End, not to mention the rapturously received Australian debut in Melbourne.  Filled with sing-a-long-able chart-topping bangers made famous by the likes of Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry and more from the songbook of Grammy-winning Swedish songwriter/producer Max Martin, the Aussie cast is overflowing with talent in this feel-good, flashy production. & Juliet is Shakespeare remixed for the girls, the gays and the theys... [but does it] really cut it as the feminist reclamation that we are promised? Will you be entertained? Absolutely. Does & Juliet set a new standard for jukebox musicals? Yes. Will you see one of the most diverse and charismatic casts of triple-threats ever assembled on an Australian stage? Heck yeah. Does the story deliver on the feminist retribution we are promised? Not quite. “What if Juliet didn’t kill herself?” Anne Hathaway (played by the enthralling Amy Lehpamer) posits to her husband, William Shakespeare (the ever-charming Rob Mills). “She’s only ever had one boyfriend, and frankly, the endi

What would you do if you were struggling to afford to pay your rent, gas, and electricity bills, only to discover that you’ve been priced out of paying for basic groceries too? When the quick-witted Antonia (the prolific actor Mandy McElhinney – who, yes, is also “Rhonda” from those insurance ads) and her fellow weary housewives discover that prices at the local supermarket have doubled overnight, their shopping run erupts into a revolt. The women begin to loot – or, as Antonia would describe it, “liberate” – food off the shelves. When the excitement is over, Antonia finds herself back home with a random assortment of fruits and vegetables, dog food (she doesn’t own a dog), canary pellets (she doesn’t own a canary) and rabbit heads. She enlists the help of her neighbour Margherita (Emma Harvie) to hide the stolen goods from her moralist husband Giovanni (Glenn Hazeldine), a staunch unionist who’s a stickler for rules and due process. The supermarket riot sets a ripple effect of absurdity in motion, ranging from a briny phantom pregnancy with added  “womb olives”, to an unconscious cop with a flatulence problem – and that’s just the highlights.  ...simultaneously leaves you wheezing from laughter and slightly deaf from the roars of others No Pay? No Way! is two hours and twenty minutes of comedic gold. Marieke Hardy’s laugh-out-loud political satire initially premiered with Sydney Theatre Company in February 2020, before it was plagued by lockdowns. But with the way that the

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

Few musical references are as iconic as those from Grease. A simple "rama lama lama" or "a wop ba-ba lu-bop a wop bam boom!" may invoke joyful nostalgia, transporting you back to the first time you witnessed John Travolta's gyrating hips or “our” Olivia Newton-John's sweet Sandy smile. For me, it takes me back to my own high school musical experience. With my Pink Lady jacket and Pink Lady sunglasses, the Grease stage is where I first forged my life-long love affair with musical theatre and the passionate community that came with it. That is what musicals are forged on: passion – and this production of Grease: the Musical at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre has an infectious amount of it. Before the 1978 film adaptation cemented Grease’s place in the global pop culture consciousness, this show set in the working-class youth subculture of 1950s Chicago was first staged in 1971. Like any rebellious teen tale, Grease tapped into the angst of young people of the time; it had a '50s style and a '70s attitude. Everyone wanted to be as cool as Kenickie (played here with delectable zeal by Keanu Gonzalez, who has also appeared in Hamilton and West Side Story), as bold as Rizzo (the eye-catching triple threat Mackenzie Dunn, as seen in Hairspray), or as sweet as the nervous Doody (Tom Davis). There were definitely elements of my high school production that built my confidence, brought me out of my shell, and changed my perspective – but the plot wasn't one of them. The musical numbers were jo

Those of us who were born during or after the early ’90s often forget that it hasn’t been that long since women were given the right to bank accounts and the means to cultivate our independence. Just twenty years prior, the options for women to get ahead were often limited to the opportunities that a man (or rather, a husband) could provide her. It is this premise that pervades Andrew Lloyd Webber and Don Black’s fairly vacuous one-woman, one-act song cycle, Tell Me On A Sunday. With a modern-day lens, it is quickly apparent that this is a man’s point of view of a woman of the ’70s – but for young women today, perhaps this production from Hayes Theatre Company and Michelle Guthrie Presents is also a reminder of how far we have come. Initially, the show that is now Tell Me On A Sunday was paired with a ballet and debuted on the West End in 1982 as a show titled “Song and Dance”. The performance made Marti Webb a household name, and the adaptation for Broadway earned her successor Bernadette Peters her first Tony Award. This formula suggests that much of the show’s success teeters on the charisma and vocal proficiency of the sole lead performer. Although often touted as perhaps Lloyd Webber’s best work musically, the show has retained the DNA of an unfinished, discarded manuscript that even an other-worldly talent cannot entirely overcome. This isn’t Hamilton’s New York where you can “be a new man”, or the “centre of the universe” described in Rent. Erin Clare (9 to 5, A Little

Sydney’s more adamant theatergoers have been waiting with bated breath to see Australian acting legend Hugo Weaving tread the boards with the great Irish actor Olwen Fouéré (Terminus). A first-time co-production between Sydney Theatre Company and Dublin’s renowned Gate Theatre, you could say that the Australian premiere of the late Austrian playwright Thomas Bernhard’s dark comedy, The President, has a lot riding on it. However, considering that Bernhard’s plays are rarely staged, in part due to the known fact that they’re considered a notoriously hard sell, it calls into question: what is the motivation for mounting a new adaptation of The President in 2024? We find ourselves in an unnamed European country at an unspecified but tumultuous time – although the play’s initial production date of 1975, a period of political unrest and bloodshed, offers some context. Following a failed assassination attempt on the titular President (Weaving) that instead slew a faithful Colonel, The First Lady (Fouéré) prepares for a night out. She harangues her maid, Mrs Frölich (Julie Forsyth) over the selection of eveningwear and frets over the state of the country – emboldened anarchists are striking at the establishment – but especially the death of her beloved dog, struck down by a heart attack triggered by the assassin’s gunfire.  ...although The President improves in the back half, it never quite recovers from a punishing first act. Bernhard’s work certainly contains themes that draw paral