I've been to the theatre

The Melbourne Fringe Festival, is a time of acting, seeing, dancing, singing. A happy time, but a bittersweet time as well, as you can never see every performance that you want to.


Testimony

The testimony of the minotaur, feels like a court case, with Matt Crosby as the minotaur pleading his case to us, the audience, as the jury. It is a story that waxes and wanes with sanity, passion, thought, feeling, hunger and pain. Matt was excellent, the ultimate story teller, swaying between these poles beautifully. Keeping us gripped the entire time. I loved the performance, would have liked to see it again, and want to see the next edition of Matt’s 101 stories.


Under Milk Wood

I had to see Under Milk Wood, as I fell in love with it when I acted in it a couple of years ago. Under Milk Wood is a play for voices, over sixty characters come alive through Dylan Thomas’s picturesque, exquisite words.

Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher, postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman, drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.

It is a beautifully challenging piece with a cast of 17. But with a cast of one I would have thought impossible. But that is what Zoe Lodge has mastered at the Melbourne Fringe Festival. In a tiny room in the North Melbourne Town Hall we were transferred to Llareggub. It was amazing how all the characters were given their voice, easily distinguishable from each other, with conversations between multiple characters delivered superbly. It was hilarious, clever, thought provoking – I would love to see anything acted by Zoe.

And the suddenly wind-shaken wood springs awake for the second dark time this one Spring day.
- Dylan Thomas 'Under Milk Wood'