Isobel Knight - Whats The Show

A Dark Comedy Of Art And Ideas

20 May 2025 Isobel Knight

The Shape of Things Rating

★★★★★

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Neil Labute’s ‘The Shape of Things’ is a one-act show crackling with tension. The dialogue and four-person cast do a seriously good job of unsettling and amusing their audience in equal measure; it’s a tightly woven exploration of art, youth, truth, and how on earth you find your way through those things when you’re still in university.

Kathryn Thomas has skillfully directed the company to explore the strange and complex interactions between manipulation and agency, art and artist. The script itself is excellent, and this production does a great job of finding the humanity, mainly through illustrating the loneliness of each character, even in their worst moments.

The show is intimate; set in bedrooms, lounge rooms, corners of campus and, notably, two gallery settings. The most impactful moments in this production come from the subtle misunderstandings that litter the conversations; each of the students in this fictional college town is thoroughly on their own arc, while being irrevocably changed by where their arcs intersect. Influence and change are central themes, and each actor does well at finding their character’s particular place and pace.

Evelyn is the most enigmatic character of the set, and is here performed as being quite aloof and hard to read. This leaves the mystery of her motivations to be interpreted, which lead to some whispers of speculation in the audience throughout the show. Some of the most disarming moments are when she softens and connects with Adam, the other lead.

Adam transforms across the play, and is played with an earnestness that endears him to the audience despite some of his choices. The web of connections and misconceptions that thread through the play leave a lot of questions and offered plentiful conversation on the car ride home.

Every character has moments of comedy and moments of vulnerability, and this small cast carry them off in style. There’s crackling tension, youthful energy and also moments that drew genuine gasps from the audience. The final moments had us holding our breath.

If you’re interested in dark humour or theatre about human beings in the throes of their fears and insecurities, this is a fascinating and engaging production of a whip-smart play. Lane Cove Theatre Company’s new space in The Pottery Lane Performance Space is a great fit for this show, and the clever, minimal set design works really well in the room. This is an impactful and interesting show, and worth a look in for HSC Drama Majors as an excellent production of a core text for Topic 6: Black Comedy.

To book tickets to The Shape of Things, please visit https://www.lanecovetheatrecompany.com.au/.

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Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall

20 May 202512 May 2025 Isobel Knight

Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall Rating

★★★★★

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Arts Theatre Cronulla’s production of Mark Kilmurry and Jamie Oxenbould’s ‘Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall’ is a delight. Susan Turner has directed a tight and skilled ensemble to deliver each joke with aplomb and endear each of the odd duck characters to the audience.

The script is whip-smart and moves along at a really enjoyable pace, featuring the highs and lows of a fictional amateur theatre company on an ill-fated opening night of a show. Despite the murder mystery tropes evoked by the name, there’s plenty more than clues and sleuths on offer here. This is a production that is finely tuned, and delivers the chaos of the show with both levity and (as evidenced by the entirely convincing comedy of errors that ensues) precision.

Angela Gibson is consistently excellent in ATC productions and this is no exception; her comic timing as Karen is stellar. Playing an amateur actor playing a role on stage for the first time is a task with considerable layers that she carries in style. Some of the biggest laughs of the first act came from her deadpan and witty delivery. Her interactions with the offstage character of her teenage niece (voiced by Arianne “Flossie” Hough) are hilarious, and Gary Clark’s sound production across the show is excellent, with one of Act Two’s biggest laughs coming from an aural gag that the actors onstage respond to.

Michael Gooley’s Shane is the heart of the show; a director and writer genuinely invested in both his cast and the play they’re attempting to pull off despite setbacks. His earnestness and timing lay the groundwork for a large number of the big laughs of the show, and does a great job at connecting us to the emotional stakes for the whole (fictional) company. Gooley’s performance also lays the groundwork for the other actors to shine; Shane’s confidence that it’s all possible regardless of all the comic mishaps is the key to the movement of the whole second act.

Phillipa is a character who sets the comedic tone for the entire show, and Ariane ‘Flossie’ Hough does a fantastic job. Her vocal and physical comedy are really strong, and Phillipa’s vanity manages to be endearing rather than alienating in her capable hands. Samuel Owen’s entry to the show was a highlight, and his Richard is a fantastic addition to the ensemble.

Brendan Jones’ Barney has the most costume changes of any track in the show, which is saying something. Jones nails the difficult task of the proud Barney’s attempts at accents, and nails the timing on a number of jokes that rely on extended pauses. Jones’ physicality is a stand-out, and the pace of his changes matched with the volume of lines he covers in the show within the show are skilfully handled.

The set (designed by Michael Gooley) is wonderful – perfectly pitched. The joke-per-minute and joke-per-square-metre ratio of this production is excellent; there is a stack of suitcases, a painting and a door that all have their own comic moments in the sun. The costuming, similarly, is very well done.

There are opportunities at every turn for comedy to ensue; hats and pants, walking sticks and slow exits all drew laughs from the audience. This is a really enjoyable and well executed production that I would really recommend.

To book tickets to Midnight Murder at Hamlington Hall, please visit https://www.artstheatrecronulla.com.au/midnightmurderathamlingtonhall.

Photographers: Maria Franklin, Mark Phillips, Dan Binger, Graham West

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Love: A Tour De Force Of Pain And Tenderness

4 April 202520 March 2025 Isobel Knight

Love Rating

★★★★★

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LOVE is a tough and beautiful play about the fragility of people in tough circumstances trying their best to both survive and care for each other. The play itself is extraordinary, with Patricia Cornelius’s dialogue feeling so real that there are moments it almost feels like an intrusion to be listening to these characters having these conversations. The best of theatre opens doors for empathy, and this production achieves this, without preaching and without voyeurism around the characters’ suffering. This production closes at the end of this week and is exemplary.

In New Ghosts Theatre Company’s production, playing at the Old Fitz Theatre until the 21st of March, there is a solid, unmoving square setpiece with multiple stepped levels, one being a double bed, all in asphalt grey, taking up most of the stage. This stark and simple set is brought to life, and illustrates the power dynamics in constant flux between the three central characters. There are several moments where the audience held their breath, several big laughs – this show is enthralling, and moves at the pace of relational change, which ranges from tooth-pulling slowness and lightning pace. Director Megan Sampson has done a fantastic job in drawing first-class performances out of a talented cast and in building a window into a world that is both poetic and raw.

Georgia-Paige Theodos is a revelation as Tanya, the tough, butch lover who we first meet when she and Annie are in prison together. Tanya’s opening monologue about when she knew she loved Annie grounds the rest of the show. More than chemistry, the cast draws us into the strange, chaotic connection that these three characters have; the kinship of addicts, the warmth that love charges people with, the protective intensity of people committed to surviving the odds. Everyone in the show is in danger of getting hurt, and has been hurt already; the threat of pain is ever-present.

Rhys Johnson does an excellent job at imbuing Lenny, a character who could have been a caricature-ish villain, with so much humanity and humour. Through Lenny’s explanation of how love has moved him in ways nothing else has, the selfishness mixed with genuine emotion is moving and challenging. Producer and actor Izzy Williams is transporting as Annie, and the explorations the show does of gender, and the particular dangers for femmes in a violent world are prodded, particularly through her performance, with a raw and painful hopefulness. Her moments alone onstage are some of the most transcendent in the show.

One of the strongest threads of this production is how we are drawn to hope with these characters; despite the dead-end quality of their circumstances and paltriness of the tools they have to face them with, when they speak of the future it’s with this energy and drive that has us rooting for them. The blatant refusal, voiced by Tanya in the play, to be pitied, is both a mantra and challenge to the audience.

Sex work, drug use, and the difficulties of life post-incarceration are central to the play, and by dealing with them with honesty and humanity, each of the characters is shown to be a whole human being, not just a stereotype of people living alongside these things. This production does an excellent job of underscoring how deeply people from all walks of life want to be both cared for and needed, and the moments of disintegration into violence and struggle are all the more heartbreaking for it. LOVE is a show (and a force in our lives) that is worth the wrestle and pain it entails.

To book tickets to Love, please visit https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/love.

Photographer: Patrick Phillips

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Isobel Knight

Sylvia: Presented By Hunters Hill Theatre

4 April 202511 March 2025 Isobel Knight

Sylvia Rating

★★★★★

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The performances of all four actors in the cast are a real strength of Hunters Hill Theatre’s really enjoyable production of A.R. Gurney’s ‘Sylvia’, with each of them finding their moments of comedy and genuine humanity. The premise of the show is an odd one, but the opening night audience was won over by the warmth and skill of the cast, and a production that invites you to look in the apartment window to the funny and very human way people navigate changing and aging.

Justin Corcoran and Brooke Davidson play Greg and Kate, whose marriage is the central site of both comedy and conflict throughout the show. Both of them bring a gentleness to their characters; Greg remains a sympathetic figure despite the oddities in his choices throughout the show, and Davidson makes Brooke both warm and wry as well as exasperated.

Margareta Moir has perhaps the biggest challenge of the show, playing the titular (canine) character, but she does extremely well at the physical comedy and energetic contribution to the ensemble that her role requires. Richard Littlehales plays three characters across the show and embodies each with their own physicality that both drew some of the show’s biggest laughs and allows the core trio to shine. Leslie, the therapist who appears in the second act, is a real highlight, and Littlehales brings both life and humour to the arc of Tom, Greg’s dog park friend.

Wayne Chee’s set design is smart and sleek; a mulit-part sofa tells the arc of the story on its own, and the way the set interacts with the particular theatre at Club Ryde allows the audience to feel as if we’re in the apartment with the characters. The musical choices in some scene transitions were a lovely addition.

This is Moja Band’s first production with Hunters Hill Theatre, and it’s skilfully done; the play moves at a gentle clip, and there is an intimacy to the apartment world where most of the play takes place. The humanity in how embarrassing we all become when we’re in a period of flux is a thread that Band’s direction clearly finds; each character is funny and sympathetic.

In line with this, the costuming and prop work is really well done, everything feels real and recognisable, which is part of what allows the comic device of Sylvia being played by a grown human woman to work so well. The very normal world we see is interrupted by an enthusiastic whirlwind of a character, and the journey through what that means for a marriage and home is really fun, sweet and off-kilter.

To book tickets to Sylvia, please visit https://www.huntershilltheatre.com.au/whats-on.html

Photographer: Amin Heidari

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Isobel Knight

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