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EXPLAINED: Melbourne theatre company | Vintage Vibes

Retrograde review – newcomer Donné Ngabo is dazzling as Sidney Poitier in this taut drama

Ryan Calais Cameron’s play dramatises a real meeting the film star had in the 1950s that became a moral reckoning

The Guardian - AU

A new, experimental The Glass Menagerie marks a bold turn for Australian theatre

Mark Wilson’s novel version of Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie at the Melbourne Theatre Company doesn’t cooperate with historical readings of the play – but is exactly the kind of theatre we should be championing.

The Conversation

The Glass Menagerie review – Tennessee Williams’ delicate classic is stomped on for laughs

Melbourne Theatre Company, Southbank TheatreWhile Alison Whyte is never less than compelling, director Mark Wilson encourages a buffoonery from the cast that is fatal to this play’s melancholic drift

The Guardian - AU

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The West Gate Bridge disaster looms large over Melbourne. A new play can’t fully capture its grief

Every Melburnian knows the West Gate Bridge, crossing the Yarra River north of its exit to Port Phillip Bay. It looms, it hums, it holds memory, it writhes.

The Conversation

West Gate review – jaw-droppingly staged production recounts Melbourne’s tragic bridge collapse

The stage feels dangerous from the opening seconds, in a play that has its faults but hums with dread as it builds towards a mighty crash

The Guardian - AU

Jean Tong’s Do Not Pass Go is Kafka for the modern corporate age

In the shadow of Franz Kafka’s visionary dystopian fiction, the faceless, hierarchical machinery of bureaucracy has long served as a symbol of quiet, grinding despair. Kafka’s institutions are at once impenetrable and absurd, systems that trap individuals in a perpetual tension between resignation and the faint, flickering hope of change.

The Conversation

A stage adaptation of Dying: A Memoir asks the big questions about death – but ends up strangely unmoving

What makes a good death? Quietly surrounded by friends and family or going out in a flash of blazing glory (whatever that means)?

The Conversation

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Dying: A Memoir review – Benjamin Law’s adaptation of Cory Taylor’s book fails to satisfy

Melbourne Theatre Company, Arts Centre MelbourneTaylor’s account of her death has been adapted by her friend and, while some scenes work beautifully, this is not a cohesive play

The Guardian - AU

Australian plays star as leading company unveils season

With extra time in development, a crop of new Australian plays should hold their own against international hits in the Melbourne Theatre Company's 2026 season.

AAP

New adaptation of Rebecca is visually haunting, but misses the core tensions of the original story

Melbourne Theatre Company’s (MTC) latest offering is a striking adaptation of the 1938 gothic novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

The Conversation

Rebecca review – Nikki Shiels is magnificent in confused Daphne du Maurier adaptation

Melbourne Theatre CompanyThe performances are rich and compelling in Anne-Louise Sarks’ take on the famed and haunting 1938 novel, but some aspects fail to land

The Guardian - AU

Destiny is a fierce new stage show exploring love, loss and rebellion under the shadow of apartheid South Africa

Award-winning playwright and actor Kristy Marillier’s new work, Destiny, is an ensemble drama set in 1976 South Africa, against a backdrop of rising resistance to the apartheid regime.

The Conversation

Grief, strength and resistance: The Black Woman of Gippsland is a powerful reckoning with colonial myths

A woman is tossed ashore, bedraggled and alone. She is believed to be a survivor of a shipwreck, possibly from the Britannia or the Britomart, both lost in the Bass Strait that year.

The Conversation

Never Have I Ever review – Deborah Frances-White comedy has its funny moments

Melbourne Theatre Company, Arts Centre MelbourneDinner party discussions of sex, money, power and race make for a heady, if contrived, mix in the Guilty Feminist podcaster’s debut

The Guardian - AU

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The Guardian - AU

Australia on stage: the best theatre, musicals, dance and opera of 2024

Guardian Australia critics pick out the best live stage experiences of the year

The Conversation

My Brilliant Career: musical based on Miles Franklin’s novel takes us on a sassy, spirited journey of self-discovery

Melbourne Theatre Company’s My Brilliant Career is a musical re-imagining of Miles Franklin’s classic 1901 novel of the same name. It follows a young woman, Sybylla Melvyn, as she chafes against her rural constraints to seek creative freedom.

The Guardian - AU

Cost of Living review – fertile power dynamics diluted by mawkish writing

Melbourne Theatre Company, The SumnerMartyna Majok’s 2018 drama wants to interrogate money, disability and care work – but despite strong performances, the play never ignites its own fuses

AAP

Rebecca to feature in Melbourne Theatre Company line-up

An adaptation of Rebecca will feature in the Melbourne Theatre Company's 2025 program, of which eight productions are premieres of Australian works.

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The Conversation

Vale Ray Lawler: the playwright who changed the sound of Australian theatre

Ray Lawler, who died this week at 103, was one of the artists responsible for establishing the first non-commercial repertory theatre in Australia – the Union Repertory Theatre Company, now Melbourne Theatre Company – and the writer of its best-known play, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll.

The Guardian - AU

Ready, willing and disabled: the Australian actors campaigning for more roles – and better training

As disabled actors fight for authentic casting, there are still complex impediments to access – and, says Prisoner alumna Kate Hood, ‘we see cripping up all the time’

AAP

New play kicks goals with tale of AFL and Australia

The Melbourne Theatre Company's world premiere production of 37, named for Adam Goodes' jersey number, tells the story of a struggling local football team.

The Guardian - AU

Meet Me at Dawn review – a deeply moving meditation on grief

Fairfax Studio, Melbourne Theatre CompanyJing-Xuan Chan and Sheridan Harbridge are excellent as a couple mysteriously marooned on a beach – but the pace of this story is jarring

The Guardian - AU

Australia on stage: the best theatre, musicals, dance and opera of 2023

From ballet to Afrofuturism to a world-class immersive spectacle, Guardian Australia critics pick out the best live stage experiences of the year

The Guardian - AU

My Sister Jill review – Patricia Cornelius’s family drama cries out for social realism

The playwright’s stage adaptation of her semi-autobiographical novel explores Australia’s changing attitude to war, but it never rises above the schematic

The Guardian - AU

My Brilliant Career to be adapted into a pop-rock musical as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s 2024 lineup

‘Joyful’ new show to cap off MTC season also featuring Pulitzer-winning plays Topdog/Underdog and English, and a ‘fresh take’ on A Streetcar Named Desire

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