Friday 27 February 2015

Sweet Charity Review, 26 Feb 2015 ****1/2


Book by Neil Simon, Music by Cy Coleman, Lyrics by Dorothy Fields
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, until 7 March, 2015
Reviewer: Kate Herbert on 26 Feb 2015 
Stars: 4 & 1/2 
Full review also in Herald Sun online on 27 Feb 2015 and in print. KH


Photo Jeff Busby
Verity Hunt-Ballard is irrepressible, funny and vulnerable as Charity Valentine and Dean Bryant’s inventive production of Sweet Charity provides a star vehicle for her myriad talents.

As Charity, Hunt-Ballard is the polar opposite of her other award-winning role as the prim, perfect Mary Poppins, but we again witness her impeccable comic timing, vibrant dance, nuanced characterisation and full-bodied singing.

She totally inhabits Charity, bringing to life this optimistic, naive, unschooled “dance hostess” in a performance that is feisty, funny, fanciful, melodramatic and, finally, tragic.

Her rendition of If My Friends Could See Me Now is electrifying and her final scenes and snatches of her signature song, I’m The Bravest Individual, are heart-breaking.

Charity is a dreamer, a fantasist who hopes to be rescued by a man – any man who will marry her - from her dreary, tacky life as a hostess (read prostitute) at the Fandango Ballroom – a misnomer for this dank, trashy nightclub.

Saturday 21 February 2015

Friday 20 February 2015

The Lion King, Herald Sun review, page 8 News, 20 Feb 2015

Here is a page clipping of The Lion King review in Herald Sun page 8 (reference on page- my first ever page 1!)
The sub-ed changed a bit of grammar, much to my chagrin. KH :-)