Linda Lokhee

Linda Lokhee is a dedicated primary school and special education teacher, a picture book author and published poet. She has written two children's books. Her debut book, The Sock Monster features a loveable but misunderstood purple sock monster named Ike. In The Night Noise, the main character is a very brave girl heroine named Quinn, as well as a loved furry Australian animal. Ike and Quinn are Linda's book babies! Her poetry book for adults is called Scattered Syllables. Linda loves experiencing all the different aspects of Australia's independent creative arts, and especially the visual and musical elements of live theatre. She enjoys being part of the Whats The Show reviewer team, writing reviews since July 2023. Her website is www.lindalokhee.com.

New Theatre’s Fighting: A Captivating Insight

19 March 2025 Linda Lokhee

Fighting Rating

★★★★★

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What’s involved in one single day in the life of you?

Do you wake up, have an ordinary and satisfying day at work, return home and feel contented with life? If you do, then you are lucky. In “Fighting”, now performing at the New Theatre in Newtown, Character A struggles through just one day of his life, and we are in the front seat, travelling along his emotional rollercoaster with him.

“Fighting”, written by Xavier Coy, is about the highs and lows of someone with bipolar disorder. Having been diagnosed with bipolar during the 2020 lockdown, the playwright felt that the disease had previously been portrayed on-screen as someone who was “crazy”. Xavier wanted to write a play dedicated to authentically depicting the complexities of living with bipolar. Written as a dark comedy, “Fighting” won the Silver Gull Award in 2022.

Sound designer Mehran Mortezaei’s choice of the opening song was perfect. Nirvana’s “Lithium” with lyrics such as “I’m so ugly”, “I’m so lonely” and “I love you, I’m not gonna crack” hints at the character’s struggles of self-loathing and internal angst, yet also has the strength and will to keep going, to survive.

Character A wakes up and is immediately inundated with noise and voices. Character B, played by Sophie Highmore, is one of hope. She is encouragement; the calm voice of reason who reminds Character A to do the exercises recommended by his psychologist when he feels anxious or heightened. Character C is the voice of melancholy. Played by David Woodland, Character C is easily recognised as one of chaos, self-loathing, destruction, and darkness.

Jay James-Moody as Character A pulled me into his world immediately with his fast-paced self-talk, a dialogue of descriptive analogies of how his body is feeling as he navigates through his workday. He is a Vodaphone salesman at a company owned by a couple, a woman in her sixties named Helga and her older partner Cliff, who have an active sex life and don’t mind sharing details with Character A. This causes him to be very uncomfortable yet, at the same time, provides a lightness to some heavy scenes. Helga, played by Sophie, is a caring boss. Cliff is a pensioner, an elderly gentleman and David’s interpretation of this character is hilarious, right down to his mannerisms – a comedic tongue popping out as he speaks needs to be mentioned!

In the course of his day, he comes across different customers, also played by Sophie and David. These customers add a scatter of comedy amongst some darker scenes. These customers are all different. Some are odd, such as the ‘conspiracy theorist’ (“you lost the sale of someone who came in wanting to buy a phone”- taunts Character Chaos). Another is a nonchalant customer (“Why even bother?”), a young teen reminiscent of a fourteen-year-old bubble tea drinker with clearly no serious plans to purchase a phone or a plan, and a customer Character A in Salesman-on-Fire mode pitches to and convinces him to buy a phone and “Be here! Be now! Be Somebody!”

Character A still holds the pain of grieving the breakup of his former girlfriend, and Jay’s portrayal of this is sharp as he tries to use strategies throughout the day to remain centred in the moment after he sees her when she enters his Vodaphone store and back into his life unexpectedly. An upcoming date and all the customers give the audience a chance to witness Character A’s fluctuating moods, from one scale of calm to the other end, hypermania, along with Hope and Chaos’ responses to these situations.

Throughout “Fighting” there is no silence, no peace for the protagonist, and it is exhausting for him. There is only Hope’s guidance and Character C’s sharp barbs, his pointed and specific insults that result in intense self-loathing. At one point, David’s portrayal of Character C‘s unrelenting mocking and scornful words combined with him physically circling him and the loud fast heartbeats of the sound design combine to create a breathstopping scene. Even Hope’s words, his own voice of survival, is silenced during this scene. The lighting by Robin Legal highlights Character A. This scene is a culmination and very intense, and there is a trigger warning of suicidal ideation in this play.

Director Xavier Coy’s production is emotional, the scriptwriting and acting of the company has successfully portrayed the disintegration of the mind, the feeling of being a stranger in a world always on the outside looking in and a loneliness that comes along with someone suffering from a mental illness such as bipolar. We felt it here, and it is a place that no one would choose to be.

“Fighting” is playing at New Theatre, 542 King St Newtown from 18 March – 12 April 2025.

Tickets: www.newtheatre.org.au/fighting

Full $37
Concessions, Groups (6+) $32
New Theatre Members $25
Thrifty Thursdays $25
Preview $20

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Linda Lokhee

It’s Only A Play – Pymble Players arrive at The Zenith Theatre

15 March 2025 Linda Lokhee

It’s Only A Play Rating

★★★★★

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It’s evening in a New York townhouse. Plush pillows adorn the bed, and the room furniture’s white colour palette portrays understated luxury. Jazz plays as the audience is seated. I loved the director and set designer Joy Sweeney’s selection of extra-long curtains, which gave the set a high ceiling and confirmed the architecture of an upper-class Manhattan residence.
This is a room of affluence and perhaps also influence.

Terrence McNally’s It’s Only A Play could be set in any era, but it’s soon clear from the references to Broadway musicals mentioned that it’s set in the present day. We join a group of creatives (and a coat check boy) after the opening night of playwright Peter Austin’s (Nick Roberts) play named “The Golden Egg”. What “The Golden Egg” is about remains a mystery for the entirety of the play, but it doesn’t matter. What matters to these characters is how it is received by Broadway’s top theatre critics. McNally’s play shows how powerful the weight of a good or bad theatre review can affect the future of a production and the survival of some theatre venues.

This is a comedy with many big characters, oversized personalities, and even larger egos. James Wicker (played with self-centred relish by Ross Alexander) is Peter’s best friend who has come to support Peter on his big night. James had previously turned down Peter’s offer to play a character in his play, instead choosing the path of acting in a long-running series on television. Was he viewed as a sellout as he swapped over to television? It was interesting to see how Ross portrayed friendship with his character’s feelings of jealousy over casting, and the interaction between he and Peter with unfavourable comparisons being made between being a Broadway theatre actor and a television series actor.

Gus (Cameron Drake) the wannabe actor, delivers a light hearted distraction whilst everyone waits for the reviews to come in. He brings several coats into the room, ceremoniously announcing who they belong to, and dumps them on the bed, which gains a lot of laughs from the audience. Many coats have their own recognisable star factor, including coats from Les Miserables, Cats, Hamilton and Joseph and the Technicolour Coat. There’s even a musical nod to Wicked performed by Gus.

Heather Pitt’s character Virginia Noyes has a feisty ‘tell-em-how-it-is’ spunk. Virginia starred in Peter’s play that night and eagerly waits to see how her return to the stage is received. Her retelling of a certain dance onstage due to an ankle monitor was funny.

Julia Budder, played by Cassandra Gorman, is the producer of “The Golden Egg”. She decided to back Peter’s play and brings hope to the room, as well as a certain fragility. Clive Hobson’s character Ira Drew is a harsh film critic. He throws a barb at Peter: “I like you personally, it’s your play I can’t stand” is one insulting comment, amongst many others.

Tim Wotherspoon, who plays the director of “The Golden Egg” Frank Finger, is a standout. Frank Finger is a flamboyant, sensitive and dramatic character, full of hair tosses and bouts of kleptomania. His highly successful previous projects prompted a potential imposter syndrome line “I need a flop!”. The dramatics with his ‘invisible cloak’ (a nod to Harry Potter perhaps?) had the audience laughing.

Director Joy Sweeney has successfully led The Pymble Players’ first performance into their new performance theatre venue – The Zenith Theatre in Chatswood. Congratulations to The Pymble Players on their opening night.

Finally, what did the theatre critic Ben Brantley from The New York Times and other theatre critics have to say about “The Golden Egg”? No spoilers here – the second act is filled with the characters’ reactions, so you’ll have to see it to find out!

It’s Only a Play performances:

14 March 2025 – 22 March 2025.
Tickets: $35 Concession Card holders $30

To book tickets to It’s Only A Play, please visit www.pymbleplayers.com.au/its-only-a-play.

Photographer: Daniel Ferris

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

Linda Lokhee

Wife – An Exploration

13 October 202412 October 2024 Linda Lokhee

Wife Rating

★★★★★

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What is the meaning of the word Wife? Australian playwright, Samuel Adamson’s script, explores gender roles and expectations of marriage through four-time chapters and three generations, taking us back to our past and into the future.

New Theatre’s production of Wife begins in 1959, with a fraught dialogue between a husband and wife behind the closed door of a house. We are eavesdroppers at the disintegration of a traditional marriage. We learn that this is a play within a play – the closing act of A Doll’s House, written by Henrik Ibsen and first published and set in 1879. Nora makes the decision to leave her husband and three children in search of freedom – and it is this ‘unthinkable act’ of a woman where the audience first gets to explore the role of a wife.

Daisy, portrayed by Imogen Trevillion, and her husband go backstage and meet with Suzannah, played by Julia Vosnakis. It is here that Robert, portrayed with scathing disdain by Will Manton, lets loose his opinion on what a dreadful woman Nora was for leaving her family. His demands on his wife and the way he speaks to her echoes the male chauvinistic attitudes that were the norm in marriages. Have expectations changed in 80 years from 1879? It seems not, in 1959.

When Robert leaves, we see that Daisy and Suzannah are secret lovers. Daisy, similarly to Ibsen’s character Nora, have followed society’s expectations at the expense of personal truths, and in Daisy’s case, her sexual identity. Daisy, who is pregnant, is at crossroads and her decision flows on to the next generations.

In the second chapter, set in 1988, two characters sit at a bar following the performance of A Doll’s House. Daisy’s son Ivar (Will Manton) is proudly, and loudly openly gay, and Eric, played by Henry Lopez Lopez, is more in the closet than Ivar. This is a scene where the intensity of the actors’ performances impressed me. One line particularly, which Ivar throws at Eric that he was so “deep in the closet you’re in Narnia!” was well appreciated by the audience. It was interesting to see that Ivar appeared to be quite the bully to his partner Eric, and I drew parallels between Ivar and his father Robert. Relationship inequities still exist, in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships.
Society had changed by 1988, and people were free to be themselves in public. But even so, they were still being treated with open hostility and discriminated against by the pub landowner, played by Pete Walters.

In 2019, a couple – Clare (Imogen Trevillion) who is Eric’s daughter, and her fiancé Finn (Will Manton) meet after seeing a production of A Doll’s House, where Cas (Henry Lopez Lopez) plays the lead in a gender flip version of Nora. Cas’ partner, who he calls his wife, is Ivor (now played by Pete Walters). Henry’s Cas is flamboyantly camp, and makes the audience laugh with his toast, “Come in your eye!”. The dialogue and interaction between him and Clare is wickedly sharp when talking about evolving – “the world is still made out of prison cells”.

Clare, desperate to know more about her father, has been searching and desperately wants to know more about him, via the man her father truely loved and called a “Firebrand”. Here we delve into middle-aged Ivar, who we last saw at the bar in 1988; a man who was once passionate about gay rights who fought against homosexual discrimination, and is now complacent. Cas now appears to be the leading partner. We hear from Clare how Eric changed throughout the years since we had last seen him, no longer in the closet but fighting against discrimination.

The last act takes place in 2042, where Clare’s daughter Daisy (Imogen Trevillion) goes backstage to see Susannah (Julia Vosnakis), after a performance of Ibsen’s play. Keep a look out for the significance of the tambourine!

Aibhlinn and Burley Stoke’s costume design placed the characters well into multiple time periods. Dr David Marshall-Martin’s set design of The Dollhouse morphed well into the dressing room and pub scenes. The use of a flower trellis in the final scene was effective in it’s simplicity and I felt was a nod to Daisy.

Wife is a deliciously layered play with many characters through the timelines, and the actors portraying multiple characters did so with visual authenticity. They were quick with the dialogue, with Will, Imogen and Peter slipping into their multiple three characters with ease.
The connections between family, if a tad confusing during the first act, become clear in the second act, with the links and characters continuing to tie the story together. The complexity and depth of the story made me want to keep going back to ponder this play after it had finished.

Wife was directed by Darrin Redgate (Boyslikeme Productions) who skilfully pulled together this play to create a thought provoking production with a deep exploration into equality in marriage, gender roles, and societal expectations. Darrin’s vision of Wife and the cast and creative team will have the audience questioning the role of a wife, queer rights and how change can happen over a lifetime.

Wife is playing at the New Theatre, 542 King St, Newtown.

Show Run: Wed 8 Oct – 2 Nov 2024

Tickets: from $32- $37

Running Time: 2 hours 25 minutes (including interval)

www.newtheatre.org.au/wife

Photographer: Bob Seary

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

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Green Day’s American Idiot – A Punk Rock Opera

2 October 2024 Linda Lokhee

Green Day’s American Idiot Rating

★★★★★

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It’s been twenty years this September 2024 since Green Day’s American Idiot album, dubbed a “punk rock opera” by their own band members was released. The title song written by Billie Joe Armstrong, captures the protest against conformity. The essence of this theme explodes onto stage with the title song, fuelled by PACA Production’s energetic ensemble in a blast of dance, music and singing. It was overwhelming in an all encompassing way with the cast dressed in black, their dancing sharp, displaying an even sharper rebellious attitude onstage. We were swept into the narrative of angst and individuality!

American Idiot the musical incorporates all the songs from the album plus a few from their next album which weaves a story of three friends Johnny, Will and Tunny. Wanting to break the monotony of suburbia, Johnny and Tunny leave their town searching for adventures, whilst Will receives some news which forces him into the decision to stay.

Johnny begins his trip full of dreams. He was portrayed by Isaac Koorey, who played his character with a vulnerable innocence that reached out to the audience. Along the way, he meets and falls in love with Whatsername, portrayed by Izzy Tilden. Izzy stepped into Whatsername with ease and her character’s strength and confidence radiated onstage. Of course, the path of True Love in a story is never easy, and we find out their fate at the end, during a song aptly titled “Whatsername”.

Johnny encounters Theo, a dealer of the white stuff in small packets, who distributes the packets to the hungry crowd by initially tossing them around like confetti. River Winn played Theo (and Johnny’s dark shadow) and had effortless magnetism, portraying Theo with wicked relish.

Tunny, played by Nathanial Lawson follows his dreams and finds his way into the U.S. Army, only to find his dreams of serving his country derailed by an incident. Tunny falls deep into disillusionment and the audience falls with him, thanks to Nathanial’s portrayal. One scene a duet with Extraordinary Girl, played by Jane Fleming, was heartfelt, and Jane’s vocals were heavenly!

The third friend whose life we follow in the story was Will, played by Cameron Mayhew. Cameron painted an ‘on the couch’ picture, with Will being enslaved to alcohol and drug addiction. His journey was quieter than the other two, but Cameron’s portrayal allowed us to see Will for most of the performance on the couch, having lost his girlfriend Heather (Rachel Bendeich) and family, and unable to do anything about it. It was a very clever decision to have Will on the stage most times, even during the intermission where we could bear witness to Will’s drinking, smoking and TV watching… all the whilst intermittently seeing his self loathing. It was a powerful statement.

The quieter acoustic solo songs sung by Isaac as Johnny, as he played the guitar were beautiful. One standout scene featuring Johnny, Tunny and Will impressed me. The three characters played the song ‘September Ends’ and the audience also appreciated the trio’s acoustic version, accompanied by them strumming the guitar.

Being a musical and having the band onstage added to the energy of this live performance. The dancing by every cast member was dynamic and creative. Co-choreographers Janina Hamerlok and Daniella Giles have created seamless and fun storytelling with this production’s dance choreography. I liked the scenes when the whole 18 person ensemble was onstage dancing together. On a larger stage, this perhaps may not have stood out as well as it did on the smaller one at The Zenith Theatre. The dances were performed tightly in sync.

Another standout of this production was the set by Rodrigo Medina Noel, William Pulley and Victor Mrowka, which had beams crisscrossing across the back which at times cast beautiful patterns on the floor. Posters covered the back wall, and multiple televisions were positioned amongst the beams. The visuals playing on the televisions at the beginning were eye catching and original. A shout out to the head of tech, sound designer and audio engineer Peter Miller for this and the sound throughout the American Idiot musical.

The lighting design by Victor Mrowka and Blake Williams continuously stood out to create mood and focus. Erica Williams, the costume manager coordinated multiple costume changes which kept the characters fresh and realistic.

Under the direction and musical direction of Rodrigo Medina Noel and William Pulley, Green Day’s American Idiot production was sensational! They have taken the characters and woven them into a dynamic production to tell a story of human dreams, traps and self reflection.
American Idiot received a standing ovation on their opening night! With songs such as Boulevard of Broken Dreams, 21 Guns, Wake Me Up When and Good Riddance, you’ll be leaving the theatre with a smile, singing at least one of Green Day songs all the way home!

Green Day’s American Idiot is playing at Zenith Theatre & Convention Centre Cnr Railway & McIntosh Streets, Chatswood NSW 2067

27 September 2024 – 12 October 2024.
2 hours with 20 minute interval.
Tickets: $52 – $62.

https://www.zeniththeatre.com.au/Whats-on/Events/Paca-American-Idiot

Photographer: Grant Leslie

This review also appears on It’s On The House. Check out more reviews at Whats The Show to see what else is on in your town.

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