Sydney Scoop • 6th June 2024

Review: Never Closer

Never Closer is a Belvoir St Theatre success, having premiered (in 2022) at the downstairs 80-seat independent 25A theatre for emerging and independent artists, its now moved upstairs to the big theatre. Something that hasn’t happened at Belvoir for 17 years.

Australian writer Grace Chapel’s debut play, Never Closer is a tense production with complex characters living through the Troubles in Northern Ireland. But this play isn’t about the Troubles, it explores friendship, love, resentment and f

Sydney Scoop • 20th May 2024

Review: Ulster American

Ulster American is hilarious. From the start till final bow, this play is a laugh a minute.

Finding comedy in the uncomfortable, Ulster American tackles some big topics and says much for the calibre of the performers and script that appalling questions can be asked and still generate laughter from the audience.

Ulster American is a pre-production meeting that goes horribly wrong.

Sydney Scoop • 10th May 2024

Review: Switzerland

Switzerland is a biographical fictitious play about crime novelist Patricia Highsmith. Set in the snowy alps, the play penned by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, delves into Highsmith’s life as a recluse in the mountains when an young underling editor from her New York publishing house arrives coaxing her to sign a new publishing deal and write one more book about her notorious character Ripley.

Sydney Scoop • 21st April 2024

Review: Toy Symphony

The Loading Dock Theatre season has kicked off with its first production for 2024, Toy Symphony.

Toy Symphony was written by Australian author and playwright Michael Gow. Australian students may recall studying Gow’s play Away, which earned him the reputation of one of Australia’s most successful playwrights. In 2007, Toy Symphony premiered at Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre, starring Richard Roxburgh.

Sydney Scoop • 12th April 2024

The Australian Ballet: Carmen

Artistic Director David Hallberg of the Australian Ballet describes Carmen as the most ambitious contemporary production programmed. It’s a performance that wins on every level.

The curtains rises on a blackened stage with a young child (Lilla Harvey) dressed in white, playing with a ball. Suddenly a figure emerges swathed head-to-toe in black, even their face is covered. It’s a menacing, dramatic start and clear this is a version of Carmen like no other.

Sydney Scoop • 23rd March 2024

Review: The Great Divide

Playwright David Williamson has been named one of Australia’s Living National Treasures. A well-deserved title having written more than 50 plays over 50 years. The prolific writer is meant to be retired, in fact he’s retired twice (2005 and 2020) but anger has spurred him out of retirement and he’s using his pen to offer a glimmer of hope.

Ensemble production The Great Divide looks at the housing crisis and increasing wealth inequality in Australia.

Sydney Scoop • 16th March 2024

Review: Frame Narrative

Playing at the historic Old Fitz Theatre is award-winning playwright Emily Sheehan’s Frame Narrative. The story stems from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein looking at what it means to create something new. In the case of Frame Narrative, layered conceptions of the story.

Sheehan creatively weaves fresh narrative into the story, spanning genre and time from Gothic literature through to 90s trash horror.

Sydney Scoop • 22nd February 2024

The Australian Ballet: Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

For the first show of the season, Australian Ballet Artistic Director David Hallberg chose the topsy-turvy world of Alice’s Wonderland. Whilst the story is based on the well-known children’s book, British choreographer Christopher Wheeldon takes the audience down a new rabbit hole, one that includes first love, even more adventures and provides a visual feast of delights.

Wheeldon’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was last performed in 2019. Hallberg says Alice redefines what ballet is.

Sydney Scoop • 17th February 2024

Review: Secret Girl Stuff

Flight Path Theatre is running Kaleidoscope Festival until the 24 February. The festival will provide audiences with a double bill each night, consisting of a short 35-minute teaser performance before the main show, Secret Girl Stuff.

Kaleidoscope is a celebration of artists and the way that art can manifest into so many different mediums.

Sydney Scoop • 10th February 2024

Review: Elvis! Returns To Sydney

Get out your blue suede shoes, Elvis is back in the building! Hip swinging its way around Australia, Elvis: A Musical Revolution has returned!

David Venn Enterprises, the team behind Cruel Intentions: The ‘90s Musical, The Wedding Singer, Bring It On: The Musical, have noted the rave reviews and calls for the King to return. The re-imagined show "is tighter, faster and features even more fan favourite songs", according to producer David Venn.

Sydney Scoop • 4th February 2024

Review: Tiny Beautiful Things

Get ready for an emotional ride with Belvoir St Theatre’s new play Tiny Beautiful Things.

It’s an incredible play exploring the hardships of life through agony aunt letters to Sugar (performed with heart and soul by Mandy McElhinney). Tiny Beautiful Things comes with a content warning that the letters were sent by real people seeking advice on all matters of life including complex conversations around life, death and love.

Sydney Scoop • 26th January 2024

Review: Overflow

Providing a rare look into the life of a young transgender woman, Overflow was written by internationally acclaimed writer and one of the UK's most prominent trans voices, Travis Alabanza.

Alabanza’s script is funny, frank and heartbreaking. The one-woman play is a 70-minute monologue of Rosie, set in a London club bathroom.

Playing the role of Rosie is proud transgender actress Janet Anderson. A star on the rise, Anderson doesn’t hold back. She’s raw, open, friendly and fierce.

Sydney Scoop • 21st January 2024

Review: Things Hidden Since The Foundation Of The World

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is clever, confounding and thrilling. The ultra-modern multi-media theatre piece is fast moving, vocally and visually. Blink and you’ll miss an important piece of information.

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World is the third-part (however created to be standalone) of Javaad Alipoor’s plays exploring the intercourse of technology and identity. Alipoor, a British-Iranian, Manchester-based writer, theatre-maker and political activist, co-

Sydney Scoop • 19th January 2024

Review: An Evening Without Kate Bush

An Evening Without Kate Bush is a cabaret show by UK singer-performer Sarah-Louise Young paying homage to musical icon Kate Bush.

If you don’t know who Kate Bush is then this probably isn’t the show for you. But fish people, fans of the artist will love this show. And I did.

Sydney Scoop • 17th January 2024

Review: Tiddas, Belvoir Theatre

Tiddas opens with the cast making their way to the stage carrying books, wine and a plate of sandwiches, chatting amongst themselves. It is a warm start setting the tone for a play about sisterhood.

Set in Bris-Vegas, Tiddas is the work of Indigenous author Anita Heiss, who has adapted her much-loved book to a screen-play.

Sydney Scoop • 9th January 2024

Review: Smashed The Nightcap

If you’re looking for a wild and a little bit naughty, late night adventure, Smashed: The Nightcap will certainly satisfy.

The Sydney Festival show is a femme-fronted mixture of cabaret, circus and drag. Featuring a live four-piece band and a troupe of powerful songstresses, circus acts and burlesque performers.

Hostess and award-winning cabaret queen Victoria Falconer is in her element as she canoodles with the audience close up, simultaneously teasing, taunting and titillating.

Sydney Scoop • 6th December 2023

Review: Swan Lake ~ The Australian Ballet

For the final show of the year, Australian Ballet Artistic Director David Hallberg chose the classic and perhaps one of the most well-known stories, Swan Lake.

Swan Lake is the tragic love story of Prince Siegfried (Caley) who falls in love with the swan/maiden Odette (Bemet). Only a vow of true love and fidelity can break the spell and free Odette from her swan existence however Siegfried is tricked into betraying Odette.

Swan Lake was first performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1877.

Sydney Scoop • 26th November 2023

Review: Darwin's Reptilia

Darwin’s Reptilia is a comedy-drama with a biting script that will keep audiences glued until the end.

The play opens with a self-obsessed couple Renata and Declan (played by Ainslie McGlynn and Danny Ball), in New York having separate conversations, neither listening to the other, until Renata receives news that her estranged mother has died. The self-help author decides to take advantage of the opportunity, travel to “wild exotic” Australia, attend the funeral and meet her half-sister

Sydney Scoop • 22nd November 2023

Review: DARKFIELD

With sold out sessions earlier this year, over 32,000 Sydneysiders experienced DARKFIELD. Luckily for us, DARKFIELD has returned to Sydney and this time there are more shows to thrill visitors.

DARKFIELD is a collection of immersive sensory experiences that take place in complete darkness. There are four different encounters (FLIGHT, COMA, EULOGY and SEANCE) to choose from (or you can do them all).

Sydney Scoop • 11th November 2023

The Australian Ballet ~ The Dream, Marguerite + Armand

The Australian Ballet presents a double bill of one of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century Sir Frederick Ashton’s timeless classics, The Dream and Marguerite and Armand.

Based on a true story, Marguerite and Armand tells the story of the tumultuous, doomed love affair between the courtesan Marguerite Gautier and her young lover Armand, recalled by Marguerite in a series of flashbacks as she lies on her deathbed.

Sydney Scoop • 11th November 2023

Review: Losing It

Losing It is a one-woman show about sexual anxiety and romantic relationships. But it goes deeper and through the brilliant script and performance of Megan Bennetts this thought-provoking tragicomedy will have you laughing, commiserating and hopeful for a happy ending.

On the verge of turning 30, Emma (played by Bennetts) is determined to lose it - her virginity - and willing to wait for her very late Tinder date, to ensure that happens.

Sydney Scoop • 5th October 2023

Review: Venus & Adonis

Whilst the name Shakespeare and his literature is known throughout the world, that of his rumored rival, lover and muse, Amelia Lanyer is less known. Venus & Adonis gives voice to the poet hidden in history, the poet that Shakespeare loved and yet borrowed her life and the words said to him, for his own stories.

The play, intended for the stage but blocked by COVID was released as a feature film in 2020 and now (finally) makes its world premiere in the theatre.

Sydney Scoop • 16th September 2023

Review: Berliners, Flight Path Theatre

Berliners is an absurdist comedic play about two roommates sharing an apartment separated by the Berlin Wall.

Full of heart and humour Berliners strikes a chord with a diverse range of audience members. This well-written, thoughtful offbeat comedy will have you laughing and commiserating.

EatDrinkPlay • 28th August 2023

Review: Miss Saigon, An Unforgettable Musical Theatre Performance at the Opera House

One of the longest-running musicals in history, the iconic Miss Saigon tells the tragic love story of Kim and Chris during the final days of the Vietnam War. But to describe Miss Saigon as a romance is inadequate. Miss Saigon speaks to the desperation of survival, the hope for a better life, and the willingness to sacrifice.