Wollongong Comedy Festival’s ‘Diana McLaren is Defective’ was a cozy affair in Wollongong’s Side Door Theatre. A hidden paradise for up-and-coming artists, the Side Door Theatre provided the perfect backdrop for Diana’s hour of comedy.
McLaren’s style of comedy relied mainly on her personal experiences, ranging from her journey with mental health, navigating the dating pool when emotionally unavailable, and circling back to specific and “weird” sex stories.
The quaint setting made for a very intimate evening without needing to undertake extensive crowdwork. Some audience members seemed disappointed at the prospect that they wouldn’t be randomly picked to talk, so they would do it when they felt they had something to contribute.
Diana’s section of her set that focused on mental health and therapy, whilst deeply personal, was an excellent display of further breaking down the taboos and stereotypes that surround diagnoses like ADHD and dysfunctional families.
She reminded us that even if we are in therapy or are thinking about going to therapy, that doesn’t mean that something is wrong or broken inside; it just means that you’ve decided to work on yourself.
I thoroughly enjoyed her analogy of driving a car that was clearly breaking down, making noises that it shouldn’t be making, the blinkers turning on the windshield wipers, and just generally being wholly unsafe and not roadworthy but saying, “This is fine! I’ll keep driving.”
Instead of going to a mechanic and getting it checked at the first sign of something not working the way it should. If you wouldn’t do that with a car, why do that to your brain?
It was a thoroughly enjoyable performance, and we hope to see Diana on stage again soon. Check-in here for more information about Diana Mclaren.
In addition, Wollongong Comedy Festival has many upcoming shows and events across July; check them out and treat yourself to an evening filled with laughter!
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.
It’s been 100 years since Noel Coward wrote his absurd comedy Hay Fever, and it’s played in theatres worldwide. Told in three acts, it follows a weekend in the Bliss family home, each of which has invited a guest over for the weekend without informing the others. When the guests arrive, the eccentric family’s theatrics and bickering cause plenty of absurdity and laughs.
Jason Darlington makes his directorial debut at the Genesian Theatre on Kent Street in Sydney, keeping the play set in the 1920s as originally written. Even in a modernised contemporary setting, this story would still make a testament to the timelessness of Coward’s writing, but it was fitting to go back to the decadence, style, and vocalisation of the 1920s when it was originally written.
The set design and associated props were spot-on and drew me into the Bliss household. The little details, such as the bookcase, staircase, picture frames, and period-correct china and tea set, really help draw the audience into the world. The 1920s costumes provide a strong sense of time and place, and my favourites were Sorel’s evening dress and Myra’s Flapper outfits.
The play has a large cast, including four members of the Bliss family, their housekeeper, and four guests. The performances from the cast were thoroughly enjoyable, as were the haughty and snobbish upper-class British accents. Maintaining the humour and timing of the dialogue is challenging, especially on opening nights, but the ensemble accomplished an excellent job.
Each character gets plenty of stage time, with the second act broken down into several sequences where a successive pair of actors dominate the stage. The jokes, the timing, and the energy all work well, with Zoe Wilson as Sorel Bliss and Elizabeth MacGregor as the matriarch Judith Bliss being especially noteworthy. Judith is a retired actress, and her subsequent theatrics were a lot of fun.
The story itself is quite soft and situational, and it’s not trying to be anything more than an absurd little romp. Much of it seems outlandish, like how quickly the characters seem to fall in love with each other, but given the theatrical and creative background of the Bliss family, it suits the characters and makes enough sense to be fun. The audience enjoyed many laughs, especially towards the end of the second act.
Despite some opening night quirks, Hay Fever is an energetic, fun, and worthwhile experience at the Genesian Theatre. Its lively performances make it a production worth your time.
Hay Fever runs from 22nd June to 27th July, with sessions running on Friday and Saturday nights at 7.30 pm and a Sunday matinee at 4.30 pm.
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.
I have three recommendations for attending the Good Food and Wine Show. One is to bring a trolley. Not a shopping cart trolley, but a stand-up two-wheeled trolley will do just fine. There is a general conception that only the older generation shops with trolleys.
However, when you go around the Good Food & Wine Show (GFWS) buying bottle/s of wine, cheese, gourmet drinks, such as jars of Honey Yuzu Tea (The Han Kitchen), a 750ml bottle of Elixir of Ceylon Tea (Dilmah), and other such foodie items, your arms will get a good workout with many shopping bags hanging off! (The GFW Show have trolleys for sale, for this very reason.)
The second recommendation is to come hungry. Don’t eat breakfast beforehand if you plan to arrive at the 10 am opening. There are 350 exhibitors, and most exhibitors will offer you a sample of their goods. As you are wandering the aisles, there are many temptations to try! For those with a penchant for savoury items, you can taste salami, and not just the usual pork salami; there was also some duck salami on offer.
Wander through the Cheese Corner, with not one but nineteen dairy and cheese exhibitors – I was in cheese heaven! For a cheese lover, this would have to be one of the show’s highlights. If you don’t eat dairy cheeses or are vegan, Noshing dairy-free cheese has a variety of tasty vegan cheese flavours. (Just be aware that they are made with almond milk, so they are unsuitable for people with nut allergies). Other savoury tastes offered were delicious kimchi, chilli oils, olives, gourmet macadamias, miso pastes and ready-made recipe bases.
One of the most interesting exhibitors I came across was Circle Harvest, founded in Western Sydney, which has Australia’s largest insect protein farm and food manufacturing facility. They specialise in using cricket protein in their food products, looking forward to a sustainable future. I tried their cricket corn chips, and they were slightly salty and crunchy, with no ‘crickety’ taste!
For people with a sweet tooth, there were certainly many exhibitors offering their desserts and cookies. (I tried the THICC cookies, which were lovely!) There were chocolatiers with gorgeous-looking handcrafted chocolates (Studio Cocoa), cannoli, and decorated donuts to purchase, all looking quite tempting.
With just under one hundred Australian vineyards offering wine tastings, as well as many flavoured gins from Australian distillers, premium liqueurs to sample, alcoholic ciders and such, my third recommendation would be to catch public transport to the Sydney Good Food and Wine Show. It would be wise to limit your tastings to a sip!
The overall layout of the show inside the International Convention Centre (ICC) was structured well. Most of the dairy and cheese sections were together, and there was a concentration of boutique wine makers (although some were still scattered around). There were maps we could download to navigate around the show.
If you were still peckish between the tastings, there was more substantial food to buy. Pop-up restaurants served pies, fried chicken, empanadas, burek, pasta, bakery items, and Vietnamese pho.
There were free-to-watch demonstration areas and various masterclasses with wine, cheese, spirit, and tea experiences that incurred a fee and were recommended to be pre-booked (I could see that most classes were already booked out for the day).
I attended the Fizz and Fromage masterclass at the Wine Selectors Wine and Food Tasting Rooms. This was a fun, small 14-person class, during which we were served a tasting of 4 Australian wines and matching cheeses. Thanks to Nicole, who led our 30-minute session, I picked up some interesting facts about pairing wine and cheese.
During the cheese tastings, I delighted in discovering the joy of the triple brie from the Cole River Farm, an award-winning artisan cheese manufacturer in Tasmania, the Tarago Cheese Farmhouse’s creamy and tasty Shadows of Blue from Victoria, and the bold, earthy Tasmanian cheddar from Pyengana Dairy.
At the entrance was a cloakroom and the welcome station for the GFWS patrons, where they could buy a show bag or a single wine-tasting glass.
The aisles were packed with people, and sometimes, it was difficult to move around. If you are not comfortable in a crowd or with constant loud noise, this may not be an event you’d enjoy. Perhaps a timed entrance to the show could ease the people traffic during the first few hours.
This is a vibrant event where foodies and wine and spirits lovers can sample the best Australia has to offer in one place.
The Sydney Good Food and Wine Show was held at the ICC from Friday, 21 June, to Sunday, 23 June. Tickets started at $39 for a day pass or $59 for a multi-day pass, plus an extra charge for any masterclass experience.
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.
If you live in Australia, then it’s likely you’ve heard of Nimbin, famous for peace, love, and hippies. But it wasn’t always that way. In 1973, a group of university students from Sydney were looking for a place to celebrate new ideas and counterculture outside the conservative restrictions and government violence of the city.
To do this, they imagined a 10-day festival of art and music and alternate living in a rural setting. The location they finally picked was a small country town in Northern NSW called Nimbin. The rest, as they say, is history.
Aquarius is a new documentary exploring the 1973 Aquarius festival, which not only transformed a small country town into a hippie heartland but also triggered a social movement that changed a generation and is still alive today. Director Wendy Champagne wisely approaches the documentary with a soft hand, relying mostly on archival footage and contemporary interviews with those involved. This helps draw the audience into the experience while not over-explaining or over-dramatizing the event.
Luckily for Champagne and editor Karin Steininger, the festival was well-documented by several film-making collectives and amateur documentarians, leaving a vast library of video, film, and even television material to use. It’s a shame that much of the video footage was either damaged in storage or shot with damaged cameras–I could see the trails of burned-in video sensors damaged by inexperienced film-makers shooting bright lights like the sun–but the film-makers wisely chose to use the footage unaltered and not try to fix it somehow.
Authenticity counts, and the footage is important to tell the story. The editing was well-paced, and the images were always appropriate for the narrative or mood. Original design sketches made by University of Sydney students at the time who helped organise the festival are brought to life through fun, clever animations.
The documentary’s core drawback is establishing its purpose. Why should people care? The film does explore the festival’s impact on subsequent environmental and social movements, but ultimately, it just feels like nostalgia bait for those who were there. It doesn’t really have anything to say to a younger audience apart from repeating how fun it was and that it was historically important. But those claims are never really that convincing.
My screening was mostly occupied by people over 60, many of whom were there. Will a broader audience be interested in some hippy festival that happened back in 1973? I hope so. Aquarius is still a well-made documentary and a satisfying look at a special time in Australian history. It’s well worth your time.
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.
