The beautiful and poignant Jimpa
Jimpa is a tender, funny and deeply poignant exploration of family, identity and love across generations. Co-written and directed by Sophie Hyde, and inspired by her own family story, it feels intimate and authentic from the outset. The story follows film director Hannah, played by Olivia Colman, who takes her non-binary teenager Frances, portrayed by Aud Mason-Hyde, to Amsterdam to visit her gay father Jim, known as Jimpa, played by...
Disco Conversion Therapy
4.5 stars Under the dark cloud of gay conversion therapy this show was born, and while Jonny’s ‘conversion’ was not only inappropriate, and clearly ‘failed’, we are healed and restored by the Disco rainbow under the ministrations of Aunty Jonny and Mikala. “Because we’re in a University we thought we should give you a lecture” says Jonny, but this isn’t traditional learning. We’re taken back to the roots of the genre around a...
Shit-faced Shakespeare
Preshow occupational health and safety: A gong for an audience member to strike when they feel drunk actor is unsafe; a bugle for an audience member to blow when they feel drunk actor is sobering up; a bucket in case drunk actor needs to vomit. Not in a manual, anywhere. When the show begins and the actors appear, everyone is searching for a clue to find the drunk in disguise. It doesn’t take long. Wet lipped, smirking and swaying,...
Ukulele Death Squad – Fifty Shades of Uke
When the venue you’ve chosen is an atmospheric old cinema in a leafy established suburb of Adelaide, the audience is already probably quite different to your Grace Emily or WOMADelaide crowd, and by different I mean more comfortable sitting down for an hour than standing and dancing. For some, this may be the only way they can see your show. So keeping the doors shut until past start time, when it’s mid-afternoon in summer, is not a...
Build a Rocket – 4.5 stars
Yasmin is ‘supposed to be the bright one’ so the moment she realises she’s pregnant is the beginning of a life that is even harder than she could have imagined with her alcoholic mother. We’re in Scarborough, in the postcode poverty side of town, and Yasmin has hooked up with Danny the DJ from the posh suburbs in the final weeks in her last year of school. When her education ends poorly after the inevitable distraction of boy vs...