Theatre / “Mamma Mia!”, Free Rain Theatre, at The Q, Queanbeyan, until May 8. Reviewed by
BILL STEPHENS.
FOR anyone who feels they couldn’t bear to listen to another ABBA song, that shouldn’t prevent them from going to see Free Rain Theatre’s exuberant new production of “Mamma Mia!”.
Although “Mamma Mia!” features about two dozen ABBA songs, they have been interwoven into an appealing story about a young woman, Sophie (Charlotte Gearside) who is about to marry. Sophie decides that she needs to know who her father is. Her attempts to glean this information from her free-spirited mother, Donna (Louiza Blomfield) have been unsuccessful. Having discovered her mother’s diary, Sophie invites three of the most likely suspects to her wedding in the hope of discovering which is her father.
Lydia Milosavljevic as Maria, surrounded by the Von Trapp children. Photo: Helen Musa.
Musical theatre / “The Sound of Music”, co-directed by Anthony Swadling and Alison Newhouse. At The Q, Queanbeyan, until March 21. Reviewed by
BILL STEPHENS
FROM the moment Willum Hollier-Smith took the stage to welcome the audience and announce that he wouldn’t be playing Kurt at this performance (he was on crutches and did manage to sing beautifully as the Altar Boy later in the show) the audience sensed that this production was going to be special. And indeed it was
.
Based on a memoir by Maria Von Trapp, “The Sound of Music” has been an audience magnet since its first Broadway performance in 1959. The combination of a love story involving worldly nuns, cute kids who sing like angels at the drop of a hat, nasty Nazis and one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s best scores continues to prove as irresistible as ever, but especially as presented in this production where everyone on stage