Joanna MurraySmith
First things first, the audience loved it. As Julia Gillard, in a performance that blended naturalism and impersonation, Justine Clarke held the crowd in the palm of her hand. They swooned and sighed to the wholesome depiction of Gillard’s working-class Welsh parents and cackled at the pleasurable jokes made at the expense of Kevin Rudd, Mark Latham, and John Howard.
... (read more)Pennsylvania Avenue is billed by the Melbourne Theatre Company as a world première, with the expectation that singer Bernadette Robinson’s new one-woman show will travel the world, like her previous one, Songs for Nobodies (MTC, 2010). In that show, Robinson inhabited several ‘nobodies’ and the famous singers they encounter. When, in November 2012, I interviewed Robinson in the run-up to the final Melbourne season, she let me in on a secret. She had plans for a new production that would showcase divas who have appeared at Carnegie Hall.
... (read more)Man of Water by Chris McLeod & Sunnyside by Joanna Murray-Smith
Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings & Judgement Rock by Joanna Murray-Smith
