AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮ 1/2 Oliver Forsyth's Tinderbox Edinburgh Festival Fringe | Edinburgh directed by Sam Carrack The comedy thriller is a volatile science, and many have been left with soot on their face in the process. Even that granddaddy of the form, Alfred Hitchcock, was “horrified,” on the release of Psycho, “to find some people took it seriously”. He may have found it “a big joke” but his audiences begged to differ, leaving showers across the country shunned. Two key composites to this

✮✮ Dogfight Southwark Playhouse | London music & lyrics Benj Pasek & Justin Paul directed by Matt Ryan A military dogfight typically is a dizzying aerial battle of wits – the kind of contest that wins battles and wars. But this slight US musical adds a second definition. It’s set among Vietnam era marines who haven’t seen real combat yet, so get their kicks from an utterly witless contest to see who can pick up, then humiliate, the local girl they deem least worthy of that du

✮✮✮✮ Nick Payne's Constellations Darlinghurst Theatre Company | Sydney directed by Anthony Skuse The only constant in life is change, and its only certainty is death. Nick Payne’s Constellations is an exploration into the ways we create and tell stories. Through its inventive format of repetition and shifting perspectives, it relays a tale that is remarkably simple, but because of its adventurous format, the work that results is profound and thought-provoking. The play discus

✮✮✮✮ Kevin Elyot's My Night With Reg Donmar Warehouse | London directed by Robert Hastie In Bulgakov’s theatrical novel Black Snow he points out that the Russians have an untranslatable word for when something goes wrong on stage. These mishaps have the gracious effect of concentrating the audience’s attention, a sharpening of eyes and ears too used to the smooth rapport of rehearsed text. But more than this they are reminders that in theatre no show is ever quite the same. S

✮✮✮ Paul Gilchrist's Joan Again Old Fitzroy Theatre | Sydney directed by Paul Gilchrist Paul Gilchrist’s new script is deeply philosophical. It asks many big questions, all of which affect our lives, but most do not come easily into daily discourse. These are themes that can be difficult to communicate, for despite their universality, the diversity in beliefs often results in unexpected conflict. Also, these concepts of truth, religion, spirituality, death, identity, gender,

✮✮✮✮ Rona Munro's The James Plays Edinburgh International Festival | Edinburgh directed by Laurie Sansom With Scotland’s independence on the ballot cards, the National Theatres of Scotland and England have chosen a poignant moment to animate a more violently troubled interlude in the histories of the two countries. Rona Munro’s uneven but utterly thrilling trilogy of new full-length history plays races through violent, profound, and pivotal episodes from the lives of three su

✮✮✮ Molière's Tartuffe a new version by Justin Fleming Bell Shakespeare | Sydney directed by Peter Evans Stories that stand the test of time contain truths that resonate across generations. They bear a universality that seems to derive from the very essence of being human, and a good retelling of those tales will always reveal to us the nature of our being, and perhaps more importantly, the morals we should live by. Tartuffe has a central theme that does not age. Our relation