Jenni Peters🆕

Author badges: 🆕 Fresh Face (4 reviews) Jenni won a script writing contest at 12 years old, that led to her hosting an award-winning Kid’s TV show, “What’s Happening”, and she’s loved writing ever since. Growing up on musical theatre, Jenni proudly watched her Mum, Kate Peters, playing all the leading ladies and singing all the showstoppers. Kate now runs the Annual Gold Palm Theatre Awards, to recognise community theatre in Queensland. A keen lover of the Arts and preferring to work behind the scenes, Jen’s had an exciting career as a Marketing and Events Manager for 30+ years, creating and managing large scale music events and PR campaigns including TRAK for Mushroom/Ace, that showcased international and national Number 1 artists and sold out shows - Georgio Moroder, The Outlawz, Brian McKnight Chris Isaak, Blondie, Iggy Azalia, Kasabian, Jimmy Barnes, Kate Ceberano, Guy Sebastian, and many other stars - as well as coordinating “The World’s Biggest Office Party” at Crown; the 2001 Australian Grand Prix Team JAGUAR dinner for the Jaguar Racing Team; the Thomas Sabo Art Deco launch; Melbourne International Film Festival functions; and Official After Parties with Black Eyed Peas, the Logies, Caroline O’Connor and many more. Jenni now assists the Chair of Melbourne International Comedy Festival and Founder of Shannon Behaviour Change communications company, Bill Shannon, known best for his long lasting TVC campaigns and inspiring Change Narratives. Music and theatre shows are Jen’s “happy place” so she’s thrilled to be reviewing for ‘What’s the Show.’

A One-Man Cabaret by Mario Acosta-Cevallos

11/10/202511/10/2025 Jenni Peters🆕

Caminare – The Echo Of My Steps Rating

★★★★★

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Caminaré, The echo of my steps.

A ONE-MAN CABARET BY MARIO ACOSTA CEVALLOS

(MELBOURNE FRINGE FESTIVAL, 2025)

For anyone passionate about life’s unique narratives, expressed through human movement or dance, this new Latin cabaret show at Gasworks is for you.

Venezuelan-born Director and Dramaturg, Clary Riven, used, “The fire of Latin dance blended with the soul of cabaret to form a tale of culture, rhythm, pride and pain” to shape this new piece, her motivation being “inclusive stories that connect deeply with audiences.”

Starring World Salsa Champ, Mario Acosta-Cevallos, who created this cabaret, we watch as Mario bares his soul, via his life’s memories, confronting personal revelations and dancing his way through the complicated discovery of ones’ identity, self-doubt, and finally, healing.

Through music and movement, Caminaré reveals episodes of Mario’s past, from his introduction to Latin music growing up in a migrant household, to the glitter of the stage, to embracing his truth as a queer Latino performer, each episode disrupted by one of Mario’s energetic, professional, technically perfect Salsa routines – a joy to watch – some which defined him as Number One, others which didn’t. This drew a clever analogy to the way our lives ebb and flow.

Mario Acosta-Cevallos’ choreographed the show with Laura Anderson, who also produced the show. Laura has worked with some of the industries’ leading artists and companies, across musicals, live music, television and, theatre, her motivation to “push the boundaries of dance as a powerful form of expression.”

The audience sees Mario’s amazing routines that defined him as a winner but more interestingly, we see Mario’s sense of humour, his vulnerability, his competitiveness and ambition, most of all, we see his heart.

Stage manager, Seamus Allan, set the stage like a dressing room or backstage area, including some of Mario’s past glittering costumes and accolades.

Lighting Designer, Tom Vulcan, warmed the stage rosy at times, but mostly in bright red lights, that gave off an intensity when required.

Handsome and physically gifted, looking every bit the leading man, while this star is an openly gay artist, I noticed Mario had as much admiration from multiple ladies in the audience as gentlemen. Many were holding flowers to present to him after the show. After all, Mario is a 10+ time World Salsa Champion, touring internationally and performing on some of the world’s biggest stages, including the acclaimed, ‘In the Heights’.

Mario shows us he has learned life is not always about coming first, rather, it’s a moving feast, a constant buffet of lessons and of growing wiser. He is obviously a giver, a teacher, and a friend to many.

I liked his lines, “Hurt people hurt people” and “Who are you dancing for?”

Also, another dance analogy to life and relationships with, “….the push and the pull.”

The brochure offers, “This show is for everyone who’s ever questioned where they belong – and for those who found the courage to keep moving forward anyway.”

Many of us could learn from that.

• Caminaré – the Echo of my Steps, is playing at Gasworks until 11th October.

To book tickets to Caminare – The Echo Of My Steps, please visit https://www.melbournefringe.com.au/whats-on/events/caminare-the-echo-of-my-steps.

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Soul Divas, Sung by Sarah C.

08/10/202508/10/2025 Jenni Peters🆕

Soul Divas Rating

★★★★★

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FRIDAY, 3RD OCTOBER – ‘SOUL DIVAS’ AT MEMO MUSIC HALL, ST KILDA

There’s Soul…and then there are Soul Divas.

On a balmy Friday night in Spring, it was time to head to the live music institution that is MEMO Music Hall, for “a celebration of one the greatest female voices of all time, sung by Sarah C” and backed by her very tight and talented band.

On entry to the venue, I met some energetic characters working the door and behind the bar, each of them obviously proud in playing their parts in vibing with members of the audience at one of Melbourne’s finest live music jewels, Memo, a space that offers an intimate room with rich and clear sound supporting a plethora of performers.

Waiting excitedly at my cabaret table, I knew I would be listening to some timeless soulful hits once sung by famous divas, but I had no idea how close Sarah C’s voice, and her talented band would come to the authenticity of those favourites.

Sarah C is known for her powerhouse voice and dynamic and glamourous stage presence. She’s done lead vocals on TV’s Dancing with the Stars and backing vocals on ‘X Factor’ as well as backing for big names like Kylie Minogue, Jessica Mauboy, Paulini, Tania Doko and Ross Wilson – but this lady belongs front and centre.

Sarah’s ‘Forever Whitney’ show tours nationally and has sold-out venues across Melbourne, including The Palms at Crown. Now an international recording artist, her recent credits include singing for Oscar winners, Goldie Hawn and Susan Sarandon.

That’s not surprising. Her voice is both powerful and emotive, technically excellent and, by taking us on a journey through every song, inspiring of human connection.

Sarah has also created original music – a debut EP, ‘Fearless’; working with Mobin Master (as her alias, ‘Carerra’) on the track ‘Werk’, gaining two million streams on Spotify; and has collaborations with dance/house gurus including Ian Carey, Jolyon Petch and Ron Carroll, with releases on Ministry of Sound, Hed Kandi, Vicious, One Love, Safari and Shock records.
So, Sarah C is clearly versatile as well as vivacious, but it was her tribute to the soul divas of the world we were there to hear that Friday night and her incredible ‘Soul Divas’ show not only took on some of the most iconic voices of all time, she’s totally conquered some of the most iconic songs of all time.

While many singers take a whole show to lead up to a couple of these hard-hitting soul classics, Sarah gifted the audience with her unique talent and power straight up over two hours and with hit after hit.

Singing ‘Love is a Losing Game’ and ‘Back to Black’ from Amy Winehouse’s second and final studio album of the same name, Sarah and the band exquisitely captured the mournful mood in ‘Back to Black’, contrasted against its’ retro/60’s Pop girl sound.

I was delighted to hear Renee Geyer’s inclusion in the mix of Soul Divas, Renee’s powerhouse voice irreplaceable since 1975. I was so “Ready to Deal” with Sarah’s rendition of ‘Heading in the right direction’ and she nailed it. After that, Sarah slipped an original into the mix, ‘My World Was you’, her own soulful invention, that fit comfortably, smoothly and stylishly amongst this nights’ repertoire, just as slick as any of the classics we were here to love:

– Tina Arena’s power ballad, ‘I’m in Chains’;
– Adele’s ‘Set fire to the rain’;
– Aretha Franklin’s ‘Natural Woman’;
– Tina Turner’s ‘Rollin’ on the river’ …and so many more great songs were mastered.

Closing my eyes during some of these songs, I could’ve sworn I was sitting right there in the room with Amy or Adele.
The show was already amazing and then we got to the finale with Whitney Houston’s songs from The Bodyguard film.
It’s unusual to hear anyone sing ‘I have nothing’ or ‘I will always love you’ with the emotion and skill the originals deserve but once more, we were in for a rare treat.

It’s always a pleasure to watch a slick band and while Sarah conducted hers, the band showed us as much heart as they had talent. Multi- instrumentalist, Hayden Baird killed it on the Saxophone and also played keys in the show. His sax solo during ‘I will always love you’ was perfection.

Damien Thomas mastered his guitar riffs.

Drummer, Jay Bruno, a steady strength with every song, syncopated with Billy Cooper on bass.

Billy’s popping slap bass kept us in the pocket all night, Billy also adding some funk to Sarah’s soul – his swag was shades of Larry Grahame from Sly and the Family Stone.

Jade Talbot played the keyboard and contrasted backing vocals, also singing a duet or two with Sarah C, Jade’s dulcet notes of angelic clarity matched against Sarah’s sonorous and smoky vocals.

The band played as one, their camaraderie warm and tangible. The audience could see the respect they had for Sarah and the gentle authority she had with her “family” of musicians.

People of all ages and styles were up to dance before the interval and were also fully focused in fandom towards Sarah and the band on stage.

Like a true diva, Sarah had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand and kept them wanting more.

There’s soul and then there are soul divas. And Sarah Capodicasa is truly one of them.

To book tickets to Soul Divas, please visit https://www.memomusichall.com.au/memo-gig/sarah-c-presents-soul-divas/.

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The Machine Stops

27/08/202527/08/2025 Jenni Peters🆕

The Machine Stops Rating

★★★★★

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‘THE MACHINE STOPS’
Stage Play adapted by Briony Dunn from the short story by E.M. FORSTER.
Playing at TheatreWorks, St Kilda from 23rd – 30th August, 2025.

All fans of dystopian novels marvel at the predictions George Orwell made in his 1949 novel, ‘1984’ with many of the tech ideas proving to be true today.

E.M. Forster’s short sci fi story, ‘The Machine Stops’, from 1909, did the same thing way before Orwell did, and was then republished in 1928, translated into 10 languages and voted one of the best novellas up to 1965. During this time, the electric shaver, the television and landing on the moon all seemed sci fi to the masses.

In 2025, our modern-day debate heats up on whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) will destroy humanity and there are strong arguments on both sides, but there’s no denying AI systems that surpass human intelligence, or misalign with human values, could potentially lead to disaster.

Briony Dunn, Head of Writing/Directing and Stage Management at COLLARTS, has adapted Forster’s story for today’s stage, directed it, and co-designed the set for this Theatre Works production, along with Set Designers, Betty Auhi and Niklas Pajanti. Pajanti also designed the lighting, whick pulsates creatively, synchronising with the mood throughout the script, strikingly and is both ominous and futuristic.

The story is set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs. It predicts technologies similar to instant messaging and the internet. Forster pointed to the technology itself as the ultimate controlling force.

Both the set and the lighting are innovative and represent well the way the story would have played out in 1909 – or 1928 – and the way we may see an underground world today. The set imposes from the start, floor to ceiling metallic pillars – not quite to the floor – representing the control of the machine and symbolising its instant messaging, its regulatory power over its subjects, with its geometrical sequence on stage, columns lined in order, 4 x 4 presenting the boundaries humans live within, in a secular way. Only a single chair to the right breaks the sequence on stage.

We are introduced to a mother, Vashti, from the shadows backstage, moving slowly towards the light, which I felt could have been more powerful if done in much less time.

Mary Helen Sassman plays Vashti, Kuno’s mother, however they live on opposite sides of the world, both literally and emotionally.

Dunn’s play also realises this point drastically, focusing on the mother and the son, a juxtoposition without physical connection – at first.

Slick screen projections display grey communication between Vashti and Kuno, similar to our “Face-time”.

In Forster’s story, Vashti is content with her life, producing and endlessly discussing second-hand ‘ideas’ and using her work to avoid real in-person time with friends. Shades of social anxiety during Covid came to mind. Fascinatingly, this prediction from over a century ago has become true of some people today, who take clickbait and three-second sound bites from social media as their truth and real news.

In Briony Dunn’s stage play, Vashti is seen to contrast between happiness and habitual loyalty to the machine with a soul destroying, maniacal loneliness that Sassman portrays too well, almost as if she’s become part of the machine herself.

Kuno, played by Patrick Livesey, returns to his mother (and us) with the raw truth – quite refreshingly. Livesey’s performance had the energy of Richard Burton in Gielgud’s 1964 Hamlet, especially with his delivery of this soliloquy…

“We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.”

I look forward to seeing Livesey’s future performances.

A particularly clever scene when the machine finally stops and Vashti can no longer press buttons to satisfy her every need, shows Sassman’s Vashti spiraling desperately out of control.

Dunn’s ending is as Forster wrote and her adaptation is just as successful in providing a warning to humanity that its connection to the natural world is what truly matters.

To book tickets to The Machine Stops, please visit https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2025/the-machine-stops.

Photographer: Hannah Jennings

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An Unlikely Couple

12/07/202511/07/2025 Jenni Peters🆕

Waterloo Rating

★★★★★

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‘Waterloo’ is modern day theatre from clever performance artist, Bron Batten, a multi award-winning Australian performer, theatre-maker and producer, in collaboration with non-artists and audience members. (Outside Eye Direction by Gary Abrahams.)

From the people who created ‘Onstage Dating’, ‘Waterloo’ turns their observations inward, exposing us to Bron Batten’s ill-fated affair and deconstructing the ideological distance between right and left.

This unique show explores what happens when a self-confessed “lefty, Greens voting, almost vegan theatre artist” dates a right-wing, cigar smoking Margaret Thatcher-loving Tory soldier. Batten met this “2nd protagonist” when she was on an arts residency in Paris in 2015 – and he turned out to be a conservative, highly decorated, high-ranking UK military official. Clearly, they had different political views yet found an intense connection and their time together formed the core narrative of Waterloo.

Batten tells us this story as one would tell a friend about her unlikely romance, a couple obviously drawn to each other in ways just as unknown as the violence we bury our heads in the sand about daily. With her warmth, creativity and truthfulness, often heavy themes of love, war and politics prove easier to digest than they first sound.

Developed in Maubourguet France, with Vitalstatistix Incubator Residency in Adelaide, a creative residency at Brunswick Mechanic’s Institute, Melbourne, with an Arts House Development Award and North Melbourne Stalker Residency, and then at Melbourne Fringe in 2019, while still morphing, this edgy piece has won awards in Melbourne and Perth and won the Summerhall Edinburgh Fringe Touring Award, in 2019.

You’ll find Waterloo strangely entertaining and thought provoking. You’ll be thinking on it for days afterward, even questioning your usual beliefs. As the daughter of a Lieutenant Colonel, my beliefs seemed lonely in a room full of students and Arts workers, but Batten wrote her questions to the audience so well, I’m sure they were also surprised at some of the final audience views.

Batten said in a recent interview she “Hoped the work would provoke reflection and discussion amongst the audience and perhaps a healthy debate in the car on the way home.” I believe her hopes have become reality.

That’s the beauty of Waterloo. Moments of divisiveness lead to moments of poignant clarity, followed by moments of humanity and the realisation we are all connected and desire human connection.

This production is not only enjoyable, it’s important, giving those of us on both sides of politics a safe space to debate our differences, respectfully.

Bron’s work has toured throughout Australia, New Zealand, the USA, France, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Romania and has been presented at festivals and venues including The Soho Theatre London, Summerhall Edinburgh, Komedia Brighton UK, The Prague Quadrennial, Performing Arts Festival Berlin, RISING, Darwin Festival, Brisbane Festival, Dark MOFO and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Founded in 1979, Theatre Works is an independent theatre group with a lot to say. Check it out. Waterloo plays at Theatre Works – 14 Acland Street, St Kilda – from 8th to 12th July, 2025.

To book tickets to Waterloo, please visit http://theatreworks.org.au/2025/waterloo.

Photographer: Lucy Parakhina

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