TISM took to three – yes three – stages at the Port Melbourne Industrial Centre for the Arts (PICA) on May 2 2026 in what can be described as a chaotic trolling of their fans as they played a one-off gig called Wankers of The World Unite. TISM being TISM, it was never going to be a conventional gig. It was originally promoted as being on at 2pm, and frankly I was down for that. The seven members of the band have all got a good 10-15 years on me and I thought we could be done and home by…
Author: Caroline Duncan
A reworking of a classic fairytale might sound familiar territory, but Mara – currently running at Theatre Works in St Kilda – takes a more ambitious route, shifting the focus to one of its most maligned characters: the “wicked” stepmother. The play, written by Hannah Pyliotis is performed by Aurora Kurth – reimagining the Cinderella story through the eyes of the stepmother, Mara. It offers a darker, more introspective take on a story that most audiences think they know. Directed by Megan Jones, this production blends theatre and cabaret elements into a 90 minute performance driven by a small but versatile…
There’s a particular kind of energy that only Regurgitator can generate, and at Croxton Park Hotel in Thornbury on 11 April 2026, they delivered it in full. Playing as part of their JUKEBOXXIN’ tour, the Brisbane trio leaned into a set built on decades of material, jumping between eras and styles with the kind of confidence that comes from doing things their own way for more than 30 years. From the moment the ‘Gurge hit the stage, the room was completely locked in. The Croxton isn’t a huge venue, which worked completely in the band’s favour. It turned the show into something closer to…
How very! The campy musical production based on the cult 1980s film Heathers that starred Winona Ryder and Christian Slater has returned to Melbourne with a brand new Australian cast. Heathers the Musical opened at The Playhouse at the Arts Centre Melbourne to an adoring audience – many of them dressed in the red, yellow and green outfits worn by the three Heathers central to the plot. This crowd screamed with laughter and delight and ate up every moment of it with glee and gave the cast a huge standing ovation at the end. What’s your damage? There’s something a…
After more than two decades away from the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Katrina Mathers has returned with her brand new show Anything But The Dyson and Other Excellent Monologues. On long-service leave from her current day job, she tells the audience she wanted to spend it putting on a Comedy Festival show. Currently running at the Black Box theatre at Transcendence in Collingwood, the show leans into the topics of midlife, memory, menopause and the strange emotional weight of everyday objects including, yes, a Dyson vacuum cleaner and the frustrations that go with operating this beast. Mathers moves between a raft of…
There’s no easing into Body Worlds:The Anatomy of Happiness, the world-famous exhibition that opened at the District Docklands last week. From the moment you step inside the exhibition, you’re face-to-face with real human bodies, peeled back, preserved and posed in ways that feel equal parts scientific and theatrical. It’s a lot. But that’s also the point. Created using plastination, a process that replaces bodily fluids with polymers, the specimens are dry, odourless and eerily lifelike. Muscles are exposed mid-stride, organs suspended in place, entire systems laid bare with a level of detail most people will never otherwise see. It’s less…
I laughed and, I’m not ashamed to admit it, cried during Spoons – Damian Callinan’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival show that’s currently playing at the Arts Centre Melbourne. The tender and heartwarming – yet very funny – story of Stan Coates, an 84-year old widower facing the slow push towards moving in to residential aged care has a simple premise as we witness his resistance to moving from the home he loves, that he shared with his deceased wife, filled with memories and close to friends and his beloved community in Spotswood. Stan could be anyone’s wise-cracking and quick-witted Dad…
Tom Holloway’s play, Beyond the Neck, based on real accounts connected to the Port Arthur massacre is an uneasy watch, even as we approach the 30th anniversary of the tragedy: some things sitting below the surface still feel newly raw. There’s a kind of silence that settles throughout the room during its current run at Theatre Works in St Kilda, as we explore the the trauma and grief of four strangers. The audience is drawn in slowly, with the weight of characters’ trauma building in its own time. Directed by Suzanne Chaundy, the piece unfolds like a musical quartet rather than…
There’s something a little bit different about Is This Thing On? – the new film from Bradley Cooper starring Will Arnett (Arrested Development). On paper, it sounds like a story we’ve seen before. Middle aged guy. Failing marriage. Existential wobble. But in the hands of Cooper and Arnett, it turns into something far more personal and unexpectedly moving. Arnett plays Alex Novak, a suburban dad whose marriage ends not with fireworks but with a quiet, painful conversation. His wife Tess, played with steady warmth by Laura Dern, isn’t cruel or dramatic. She’s just done. That low key realism sets the…
I still can’t shake the thrill of seeing and hearing the Hoodoo Gurus with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra play together under the stars at Melbourne’s iconic Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Thursday 29 January 2026. It was one of those performances you end up telling people about long after the encore fades: a rare collision of classic Aussie rock grit with orchestral splendour that felt perfectly suited to a summer evening in Melbourne. From the moment the lights dimmed and the first sweeping strings opened the show, I knew this wasn’t going to be your standard rock gig. The MSO…
Lady Gaga’s return to Melbourne has been a long time coming. Eleven years since she last set foot on a local stage, she arrived at Marvel Stadium over two huge nights on Friday and Saturday with the Mayhem Ball, a show built to overwhelm, provoke and entertain in equal measure. With a reported 60,000 people filling the venue, each night, the scale matched the occasion, and Gaga delivered a concert designed to pull focus from the first cue to the last blackout. From the opening moments when she arrived atop of a large red birdcage-like structure, the tone was set…
Iconic Australian comedian, singer and drag cabaret performer Reuben Kaye held court on the stage of the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall at the Melbourne Recital Centre on Saturday 29 November, as he delivered night two of his much-hyped show enGORGEd. Backed by an 18-piece orchestra, the performance was larger, louder and more daring than probably anything else the prestigious hall has hosted in recent years From the moment he stepped on stage for a hometown crowd, Kaye owned the room with his razor-sharp wit, glittering glamour and a voice as powerful as his stage presence. The night moved seamlessly between big-band…