Category: Arched Eyebrow Theatre Review
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Congratulations, Get Rich!
By Merlynn Tong HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama It’s the Opening Night: Seventh Night of Chinese New Year (AKA Human Day) Extravaganza at the Money Money Karaoke Bar. But the mood is sombre. Karaoke bar entrepreneur, Mandy (Merlynn Tong), is curled up on a podium. Her despair is palpable. Her boyfriend, Xavier (Zac…
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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe
By Edward Albee HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama George (David Whiteley) and Martha (Kat Stewart) are not a happy couple. They stumble home from a party. Martha literally stumbles in her state of stinking intoxication. George seems more sober but stumbles in face of Martha’s attacks upon him. With her inhibitions even lower…
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The Talented Mr Ripley
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama A minimalist stage is brightly illuminated. Three or four large beach umbrellas stand in the middle distance. Somnolent Italian folk music plays in the background. A man selling colourful balloons strolls across the beach scene. Dickie Greenleaf (Raj Labade) and his girlfriend, Marge (Claude Scott-Mitchell), luxuriate in their…
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Circle Mirror Transformation
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama The stage lights come up. Five characters, in various forms of active wear, are lying on the floor of a multi-purpose community centre. One-by-one they call out a number as the group, collectively, counts to ten. When two characters speak over each other, everybody giggles. The stage lights…
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Prima Facie
By Suzy Miller SUPREME EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama Tessa is a thoroughbred. A young barrister at the height of her considerable powers. During cross-examination, she plays the witness like a master-conjurer. Feigning ignorance, projecting incompetence whilst slowly tightening the noose around the witness’ neck. By the time the witness knows they’ve been duped,…
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama It’s December 1918. The Great War has just ended and Roger Button is a happy man. As he walks – nay, prances – through his Cornish fishing village, Roger stops to tell various townsfolk that today is the day! Today is the day he will become a father. Oh,…
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Retrograde
CATERPILLAR EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐ The Drama It’s 1950’s Hollywood. Screenwriter, Bobby, and film executive, Mr Parks, are meeting in a spacious, but austere, office to discuss the signing of a young black actor, Sidney Poitier, to a major production. Both men are white. Bobby is Poitier’s ally, at least notionally. Mr Parks, from the…
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A Comedy About Spies
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama It’s 1950’s cold war-era London. A rogue British agent has stolen the plans for a top-secret weapon. Project Midnight! Both the KGB and the CIA descend upon a Piccadilly hotel. KGB agents, Sergei and Elana, to retrieve the stolen plans. CIA agent, Lance (and his mother, Janet) to prevent…
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Back to the Future
CATERPILLAR EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐ The Drama If, somehow, you do not know the story…take this as your friendly spoiler alert! It’s 1985 and Doc Emmett Brown (Roger Bart) has built a time machine…from a DeLorean. It may have taken 30 years – since he fell from a toilet and hit his head and saw…
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Just For One Day
SUPREME EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama It’s 2025 – a mere 40 years since Live Aid – and Jemma is leaving home to attend university. Her mother, Suzanne, has slipped the Live Aid picture book into her backpack. Just as something to help Jemma remember her mum. But Jemma knows nothing about Live Aid. The event may live within…
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Hadestown
CATERPILLAR ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐ The Drama It’s love at first sight in Hadestown. Orpheus (Noah Mullins) is a poet and a songwriter. Eurydice (Abigail Adriano) is his muse. Famine abounds and the young lovers live in poverty. But there’s warmth to be found in the Hadestown jazz and blues bar where Hermes (Christine Anu) plays master of ceremonies…
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Bloom
Book & Lyrics by Tom Gleisner SUPREME EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama The Pine Grove Aged Care Centre is in crisis. The inmates residents are unhappy. They are restricted to the centre, where activities are frequently cancelled and the food is barely worth living for. They have nothing to do except wait to die.…
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An Evening With Bob Geldof
SUPREME EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ This Man Can Talk! Sir Bob Geldof is pacing up and down the stage. He’s wearing a black t-shirt, denim jeans and a suede jacket. If a comb has made its way through his long white hair, it’s not obvious. But his equally white beard is well maintained. Geldof suddenly…
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Kylie – Tension Tour 2025
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Kylie Minogue, dressed in a red jumpsuit adorned with sequins, pauses between songs and gazes across the audience, a sexy smile on her red lips. She spots a sign but is confused by its message. “What does that mean?” she asks whilst pointing. “Have we met before? Or are we…
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MJ: The Musical
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The DramaThe performers wander into the studio in ones and twos in their eclectic active wear. Some are back-up singers. Some are musicians. Others are dancers. Some begin to stretch. Others stand in huddles and gossip. A couple start practising their dance moves. And then MJ arrives. He sidles in…
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4,000 Miles
By Amy Hertzog HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Drama Both the stage and the theatre are enveloped in darkness. Soft, reflective music is playing. This goes on for so long that I contemplate closing my eyes and enjoying a brief nap. Suddenly the stage is illuminated in startling yellow light. Vera (Nancye Hayes) stands in the foyer…
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Sunday
CATERPILLAR EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐ The Dramatic Premise Sunday Reed (Nikki Shiels), along with her husband, John (Matt Day), are patrons of the arts. They see life, itself, in painted works. Action. Pathos. Life. They can distinguish good art from bad art; the exalted from the derivative. And they are full of passion. Passion for…
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Jesus Christ Superstar
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Dramatic Premise All is not well amongst Jesus (Michael Paynter) and his followers. One of his disciples, a man named Judas (Javon King), thinks the movement is heading in the wrong direction. He tells him so. Others, in the meantime, are eager for Jesus to lead them, triumphantly, into…
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Sweat
By Lynn Nottage HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Dramatic Premise We’re in Reading, Pennsylvania. It’s the early 2000’s and George W Bush has just been elected President. Childhood friends, Tracey (Lisa McClune), Cynthia (Paula Arundell) and Jessie (Deborah Galanos) are meeting at the local bar. There’s a jukebox in the corner and an electric…
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Golden Blood
By Merlynn Tong HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Dramatic Premise It’s 1990’s Singapore. Girl (Merlynn Tong) is 14 years old. Boy (Charles Wu) is 21. They hardly know each other. But following their mother’s sudden death, they’re suddenly orphans. Boy agrees to become Girl’s guardian. Initially, they tip-toe around each other. But they seem…
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Titanique
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Dramatic Premise It’s 1912. The Titanique is leaving Southampton. Soon she will be steaming across the Atlantic towards her destiny with a (surprisingly camp, but charismatic) iceberg. The passenger list is familiar to anybody born after 1997. There’s Rose Dewit Bukater (Georgina Hopson) and her fiancé, Cal (Keane Sheppard-Fletcher).…
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Sunset Boulevard
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Dramatic Premise I am big! It’s the pictures that got small! Norma Desmond (Sarah Brightman) is in a trance. She’s standing in her decaying palazzo. Her hands are clasped to her chest. She’s watching her own performance in Joan of Arc. She’s mesmerised. Enraptured. Behind her, writer Joseph Gillis (Tim Draxl),…
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Sister Act
CATERPILLAR EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐ The Dramatic Premise Deloris Van Cartier is a promising singer with a booming voice. But her career has stalled. Her boyfriend, Curtis Shank, runs the night club at which she sings. But all his promises are hollow. After yet another failed undertaking, Deloris decides it’s time to part ways with Curtis…
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Hamilton
SUPREME EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Dramatic Premise Alexander Hamilton, future founding father and United States Treasury Secretary, grew up impoverished, and in squalor, on the Caribbean island of Nevis. But after penning a stirring account of a hurricane which destroyed his home, the townsfolk raise sufficient money to send the young Hamilton to New…
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The Odd Couple
HIGH EYEBROW ARCH – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ By Neil Simon The Dramatic Premise Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison are the best of friends. But they are nothing alike. Felix is slim and well dressed. He feeds off his nervous energy. He’s the neatest of neat-freaks. Oscar Madison is overweight and uncouth. He feeds off the junk food…
