430 stories by "Anne-Marie Peard"
The Melbourne Festival production of Peter Sellars Desdemona sold out. With reactions ranging from  “tedious” " there were walk outs and some impressive snoring " to gen…
I didn’t take my eyes off the stage and am still trying to fully understand the astonishingly beautiful, often disturbing and totally unapologetic adaption of The Bacchae created…
The Rabbits is an hour-long opera based on a 1998 children’s picture book. Its Melbourne Festival season is sold out and as the Playhouse exploded with joy at the end of last night&…
The winners of the 2015 Melbourne Fringe festival awards were announced on Saturday 3 October at the Fringe Club at the North Melbourne Town Hall. Ten awards across the Fringe categori…
Rowena Hutson has two dog tags; one that says feminist and one that says scoundrel. Strong Female Character looks at the action heroes that shaped Hutson's character but, fair warning, the s…
Everyone knows that Rob Lloyd is a fan of Doctor Who, but his long-term relationship with that show is pre-dated by his first love, Star Wars. The Heart Awakens is a love letter to that rela…
Melita Rowston’s paternal grandfather told the story of how he nicked Ned Kelly’s bones from the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1929. Her maternal great great great grandmother ran a pub …
No Punchline is a circus show about female boxers that celebrates athleticism while also looking at the roles of women in society. I think there's an inherent disconnect in a circus s…
The subject of mental illness is tackled head on in the ladies bathroom in this funny two-hander downstairs at the Butterfly Club. Jo and Sam have issues and they are going through…
The Lowdown Hokum Orchestra have been around long enough to know exactly what they're doing. If only they'd have the confidence to leave it at that. The setup for That's Showbiz is tha…
Welcome to Little V's nightmare: a place where time is irrelevant and nobody is safe. Virginia, the eponymous Little V, has a surprise for us, but we must wait. Meanwhile, we are subjected t…
It's not for nothing that Church of Wonders is on at 10:15 at night. It's the sort of filthy pleasure best enjoyed in the very late evening. Melbourne-based women's performing troupe Chest o…
After seeing Gender Spanner, the show directly following it at Scratch Warehouse, F*#king with Gender, all seemed a bit too safe " if beautiful to look at. Taking its inspirations from Strin…
The fear sets in when the pre-show music is Enya. What if it’s a feminist performance-art trigger-warning sacred-vagina dance? If is. With cloaks, poetry and a sperm mime performed by …
Minnie and Mona like to play. Minnie wants to play first date, to play ants, to be a unicorn with a cheeky secret. Mona just wants to play dead. To be dead. Suicide is a tough subject and Th…
Experiencing Steppe at 707 Operations, it struck me that, for the people of Poland during the Second World War, there was no least worst option. The Nazis had come from the west, and then th…
An exciting new initiative between Malthouse Theatre and Monash University, Welcome to Nowhere gives us five brand new plays written by some of Australia’s most fascinating playwrights…
Bridget is obsessed with rock bands. Georgie is obsessed with death. Together we indulge their obsessions, because we understand them both and the moments and places they connect. Performed …
Alice Tovey: Malice is one of the highlights of the Fringe Festival so far. Is Malice really about malice or is it just a pun on Alice's name? Are carefully-aimed criticisms of society along…
Jessica McKerlie doesn't like labels. She doesn't like them when society gives them to us. She doesn't like it when we give it to themselves. She doesn't even like the word labels. Wh…
HART is beautiful, heartbreaking and liberating storytelling. With old checkerboard lino, faded damask wallpaper and a wooden table, the tiny stage in the Fringe hub Parlour Room look…
Vampire Lesbians of Sodom is a very stupid play, and this is a fittingly stupid production of it. Charles Busch's classic drag satire of Hollywood leading-lady tropes looks none of its 30 ye…
In #DearDiary, Andi Snelling walks a fine line " and she knows it " between nostalgia and indulgence, reading extracts from the diaries she has kept most of her life. One actor shows can be …
Melbourne’s Emily Taylor worked with primary school students to create the characters, opinions and ideas for Backwards. In her show about understanding life backwards and living it…
MKA has a strong reputation for hard-hitting political theatre, but their latest " Bounty " is more miss than hit. Eric Gardiner, writer and sound designer, targets ex-Queensland Premier Cam…
