While being one of Shakespeare’s less-performed plays, the Merry Wives of Windsor uses many of his classic theatrical elements including disguises, revenge plots, arranged marriages, and plenty of innuendo. With recognisable characters and plot points from other Shakespearean comedies, this rendition also aligns the script with equally recognisable comedy tropes from an Australian context to add extra dimension to the raunch and gossip.
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Life comes at you fast or, rather, if you’re already on the wrong side of things, the systems of “justice” and “fairness” will take your life away from you fast. Deep in the heart of those structures, it’s always easier, even preferable, to blame an individual rather than the circumstances.
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It’s the kind of story that rallies people together and strikes fear into the hearts of the rich and powerful: the downtrodden rise up and right the wrongs done to them by their oppressors. In the case of Fuente Ovejuna, the history is true. In Angus Evans’s new adaptation of the Spanish classic, the patterns of revolution ring out across time and place.
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After the year we had in 2020, we could all use a bit of a laugh. Cue one of the oldest comedy writers out there with the classic tale of love, deception, mistaken identities, and twins! But, this time, with a twist.
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The story of Picnic at Hanging Rock has haunted the Australian conscious for decades. The original novel spurred on multiple film and stage adaptations as well as a musical, radio play, and miniseries. This most recent stage adaptation by Tom Wright condenses the atmosphere of the iconic tale and heightens its drama exponentially.
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Image by Blake Condon
Perhaps this is an unremarkable Friday evening in the home of an upper-class family with its usual problems. Or, perhaps this is the evening that finally begins the process of throwing the many cracks of regret, deceptions, and desires into relief; when the rocky marriage, alcoholic sister-in-law, fake friendships, and co-dependent daughter all come home to roost.
Image by Alison Lee Rubie
What is the measure of a life? It’s a question not often considered in the rush of living but left for the last moments of reflection when it all feels a bit too late. Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize winning script is a meditation on the boundary between life and death from the perspective of one accustomed to the event in the abstract.
Image by Kelvin Xu – Luky Studio
This review comes from Night Writes guest reviewer Nicole Pingon.
Zhu Yi’s A Deal, delves into the conflicts between the East and West, old and new ways of thinking and the love and passion that drives us all. Through her wit and humour, Yi presents an intriguing Chinese perspective on the generational and cultural conflicts that exist as a result of a globalised America.
Image by Becky Matthews
In the near future, the world has reached breaking point: the government is forcibly mandating birth control, people are fleeing across borders, communications have broken down between major powers and volatile states, and nuclear war hangs on the horizon. Ditch makes manifest the threats, predictions, and fears gathering for generations and presents the world as it may one day be.
Night Writes 