Brodie Turner

In this their 20th year, The Production Company has continued to bring long-loved musical theatre stories into a tier of the professional sector that fosters new talent, puts Australian superstars in dream roles, and delivers to the letter on that wholesome energy Broadway and West End are known for, right in the heart of Melbourne. The Boy from Oz is no exception, known as 'the great Australian musical' for its depiction of one of Down Under's most treasured exports, the legendary Peter Allen. This production is neck-deep in nostalgia and ocker charm, while keeping a firm grip on Allen's camp and charismatic persona for which he became famous...well that and all the hits! I Honestly Love You, I Go to Rio and I Still Call Australia Home are given a glittering treatment in a show spackled with sparkle.

The sophomore Provocare Festival is returning to spice up the Melbourne winter with a program that will really knock you out of hibernation. Of course the talk of the town has been the thrilling return of American photographic artist Spencer Tunick, whose large-scale outdoor mass-attended nude artworks are renowned the world over. Broadway World got the chance to chat with Spencer and Provocare Festival director John Lotton about what's to come.

It was not that long ago, and a time not unlike that which we live in now, that Green Day released the album American Idiot that narrated a story of the world's greatest nation's underbelly that many sought out through the punk movement to ease the social and political tensions at the turn of the millennium. Now Trump replaces Bush, Parkville replaces Columbine, climate change replaces global warming, South Korea replaces Afghanistan. American Idiot showed the world from the perspective of the middle class white male before we used words like privilege, proto-feminism and appropriation in the way and as frequently as we do today. He was frustrated, compelled to patriotism (or nationalism depending on your circumstances), seeking escape, modelling a tough exterior through whatever styling, attitude and substance would credit it. All the while advances in technology pummel the world's youth with information that elevates and isolates the individual. Such is the environment we are transported into in the musical adaptation of that album so many millennial adolescents leaned on.

The era of the jukebox musical seems to be here to stay, and Australia its fertile ground to spring from: the Beautiful story of Carole King, the adaptation of Whitney's Houston's catalogue into The Bodyguard, mega-hit Jersey Boys, and of course Dream Lover comprising the instantly recognisable sounds but widely-forgotten story - and legacy - of the multi-talented Bobby Darin. Easy thought it might feel to relegate this musical to the contemporaries of its time, Dream Lover's powerful messages of obstacles overcome, dreams fulfilled and sacrifices for success connect to every audience member. Darin's life, adapted for the stage by Frank Howson, Simon Phillips and Carolyn Burns based on an original concept by Frank and John Michael Howson, seems too dramatic to be real, and this larger-than-life production tames that line between truth and fantasy brilliantly.

If you happen to be looking out this December 24th night for the perv in the red suit taking credit for all the presents your parents bought this year and notice the posse pulling the sleigh looking a little anemic, well there's a perfectly logical explanation:

The saying goes there's nothing more like fantasy than reality, and the Melbourne premiere of All the Sex I Ever Had serves that idiom with gusto and sincerity.

Sabrina Martin, Kiwi creative chanteuse, has brought a sensory delight from across the ditch for an interactive and insightful evening discovering the mystery and magnificence of the female orgasm in May Contain Sex Scenes. The show is difficult to review, as a great deal of its power lies in its element of surprise and uninformed, unprepared discovery - which is perhaps already indicative of its themes. Purchasing a ticket will require your familiarity with your comfort zone, a willingness to step outside of it, and a desire to enjoy the sensation of being outside it where you may find a new peak of arousal, or a profound respect for the sexuality of the woman which in our culture is not nearly as liberated as we'd like to think looking at the media today.

It cannot be underestimated, the place of an audience in the energy of a show and their collective states of mind. Having seen Gavin Roach's Measure of Man last year as part of Sydney Fringe, this reviewer was excited to see how the Melbourne Fringe production had stayed true to the message of the work whilst managing to refine its structure and push it beyond stage boundaries to really hit home the importance of sexual taboos that still exist in society, both inside and out of the queer community.

The Very Good Looking Initiative are back with a show that is the comedy-theatrical version of the sensation you get at the end of a YouTube Hole, and if you think Family Guy knows how far they can stretch a joke, wait until you see Let's Get Practical! Live. Any lovers of the Fringe condition and the Cranberries need to book their tickets instantly, and if you find yourself slightly inebriated by the time the curtain goes up (which I do declare I didn't), then the odds are sure to be in your favour.

Some argue it is the epic play of our generation, an iconoclast of politics, existentialism and the last health crisis to impact the modern world indiscriminate of race, class or religion. Tony Kushner's opus Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes premiered in 1991 and opened on Broadway in 1993. It became a cult classic: turned into a miniseries and several highly successful remounts, the latest of which is being raved about as you read this; the National Theatre in London's production starring Hollywood hero and homo-controversy-courting treasure Andrew Garfield.

Willow Sizer takes you right back into the presence of scintillating forties diva songstresses, all the way down to the shivers along your upper arms. Sitting spellbound in the Loft at Chapel of Chapel, an uncontainable crowd were transported back to the times of undulating figures and captivating stylings. Sizer's cabaret show, Put the Blame on Mame is a genuine and charming education on her upbringing discovering her legitimately impressive talents under the guiding hand of blueprints set down my masterminds like Eartha Kitt, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe and Rita Hayworth. The show was so good, this reviewer questioned whether they had lost their wits completely, the kind of platitudes it was engineering in his ordinarily critical mind, completely disarmed by Sizer's singing and sensuality evocative of everything those incredible women brought into our collective consciousness.

There is nothing much unfamiliar about the very real invasions of privacy, hyper-surveillance, augmentation of technology, flaws in cybersecurity, and moderate resurgence of feudal attitudes we experience in life that art often imitates. For all its relevance, not to mention its prevalence in secondary school texts, and cult following to boot, 1984 could all-too-easily suffer from a stage adaptation remiss in pushing it beyond its direct correlation to the frankly frightening realities of contemporary living that have emerged almost exactly as predicted by the source material published in just shy of seventy years ago. Mercifully, Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan's adaptation, is anything but by the numbers. What we have here is a visually powerhouse, intellectually dynamic, risk-taking presentation of the modern making of meaning. Potent from the first moment right through until the dripping finale, it's a post-show conversation you don't want to miss.

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BWW Review: TRAINSPOTTING LIVE a RAazor-Sharp Cold Sweat Sensation at fortyfive downstairs