Shrek the Musical JR Presented by: Stage School Australia Book and Lyrics: David Lindsay-Abaire Music: Jeanine Tesori Date Attended: 1 October 2026 Director: Georgia New Musical Director: Lucy Ross Choreographers: Grayson McBurney and Caity Bond Assistant Musical Director: Lauren Bull Costume Supervisor: Morgan McAleer Sound Operator: Derek Wilson Lighting Operator: Sev Harman Photography: By B'rit Creative "Do you know the muffin man...?" I have now seen Shrek the Musical enough times that I should probably be paying council rates in Duloc. Thankfully, Stage School Australia’s Shrek the Musical JR gives me a new cast of young performers to cheer for, wrapped up in a fast, colourful school holiday production. This is Stage School Australia’s third full-scale Brisbane production (and the third I’ve seen). Directed by Georgia New, the show flies by! It packs a lot of story, music, costumes, and fairytale creatures into its shortened junior runtime. Although I do quietly mourn a few of my favourite songs that have been sacrificed along the way… Harrison Slater plays a sweeter, gentler Shrek than many I’ve seen. I also love the decision to use green face paint rather than covering him with a heavy mask, leaving Harrison’s expressions visible throughout. His enunciation is excellent, and I applaud his attempt at the Scottish accent. Shrek doesn’t actually get a huge amount of solo singing in the junior version, but Harrison opens strongly with “Big Bright Beautiful World”. Also, shoutout for spending the better part of a week painted green. Theatre is so glamorous! Neil Marco II Aballe is an adorable Donkey, tackling one of the wordiest roles in the show and the sheer quantity of memorised dialogue valiantly. His enunciation stays strong through all that chatter, too. “Travel Song” captures the pair’s growing friendship (and the experience of being trapped on a road trip with someone who will not stop talking), while “Make a Move” lets Neil lead the company with full gospel-choir enthusiasm. The duet between Shrek and Fiona, “I Think I Got You Beat”, remains a thing of beauty (romance via competitive childhood trauma and bodily noises). What a courtship ritual! Esperanza Falconi has fun with Fiona’s two settings: pristine storybook princess and ball of aggression. One moment she’s all poised smile and perfect princess manners, and the next she’s ditched the whole facade because Fiona’s impatience or competitive streak has won. Essie carries that same split into her singing. “Morning Person” sits in a pretty, bright head voice, while the unhinged bridge of “I Know It’s Today” (“the waiting, the waiting…!”) lets her unleash a crazed belt. Across both, she has such a strong, assured musical theatre voice, and I really hope this is a path she keeps pursuing. Alongside Indiana Osborne and Chelsea Carman as Young and Teen Fiona, the three voices blend beautifully once the harmonies start stacking together in “I Know It’s Today”. Lucie Roy gets another of the production’s biggest vocal moments as Dragon in “Forever” amid enormous castle gates, glittering knights, and huge dragon wings. Excellent. More is more. I’d love to see gloves added to complete Roy’s Dragon costume and disguise the mechanics of manoeuvring the wings a little more, but the overall effect is suitably grand. Duloc is colourful and mildly terrifying, populated by cloned children maintaining the strained smiles (mostly) through “Welcome to Duloc”. The synchronised choreography is wonderfully rigid and cheerful. A few of the kids occasionally dissociate instead of grinning, which I assume is what happens after several days of rehearsals, performances, and being ordered to smile like a tiny citizen of a fascist theme park. Oskar Stam’s entire Lord Farquaad situation deserves appreciation, from the costume and physical comedy to the small matter of spending virtually the entire week performing on his knees. My knees hurt simply thinking about it! The costumes have plenty to look at, from the detailing on Fiona’s dress and wig to the endless parade of fairytale creature looks. “Story of My Life”, led by Eliza Cullerton as Pinocchio, gives those characters their first chance to spill across the stage together, each with their own personality. Eliza later transforms into the Pied Piper and leads a troupe of tap-dancing rats! “Freak Flag” brings the whole collection of oddballs together. Shoutout to Mina Brailov as Mama Bear and Gracie Ollerenshaw as the Wicked Witch in their lovely featured vocal moments. With such a large company, performers are continually rotated through the musical numbers rather than disappearing into the background for half the show. Grayson McBurney and Caity Bond’s choreography helps with that too, keeping the ensemble busy rather than letting every number dissolve into the same lines and formations. The spoken comedy doesn’t always receive the laughs it’s reaching for, and the accents occasionally take an international holiday between Scotland, America, and Australia. The leads’ clear dialogue helps enormously, particularly given how quickly this version races along and how little time the cast has to learn it. One detail I particularly enjoy is that the experience doesn’t begin and end with the curtain. Characters mingle with audiences before and after the show, with plenty of photo opportunities for kids. School holiday productions like this give young performers a concentrated taste of putting on a full musical: learning choreography, managing costume changes, developing characters, singing as an ensemble, and facing a live audience after an intense rehearsal period. And after all that, everyone still has enough left in the tank for an encore of “I’m a Believer!" Stage School Australia’s Shrek the Musical JR is bright, busy, and fuelled by a young company throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the swamp.

Taking a Bite Out of Dracula: Inside Ghostlight Theatre’s Bloody New Production I recently had the opportunity to attend a rehearsal for Ghostlight Theatre Company’s Dracula. Reagan Warner, portraying the Count, already seemed entirely at ease embodying evil. He observed Van Helsing with a faintly amused, knowing expression, as if Dracula relished just how badly outmatched everyone else was. Warner's low Transylvanian accent added to the menace, complemented by the red eyes, dark features, and some truly wild eyebrow acting. This is not a tragic, glittery vampire lover. Ghostlight Theatre Company is bringing William McNulty’s stage adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Beenleigh Theatre for just four performances this October. Yasmin Elahi is producing and directing, while also handling set, costume, and lighting design. She is supported by a talented team: Tomm Burnett as Assistant Director, Dan Pohlmann as Fight Choreographer, Sarah Latter as Choreographer, Christina McMahon as Stage Manager, and Charlotte Horn in charge of SFX Makeup. This dedicated team has much to manage, including fight choreography, blood effects, prosthetic makeup, physical transformations, stunning set pieces, a complex soundscape, ballroom dancing, and even a performer on stilts. Which version of Dracula are we getting? For over a century, Dracula has been everything from a fanged monster and mysterious aristocrat to a seductive antihero, a children’s character who runs a hotel, a classic Halloween costume, and even... Nicolas Cage. Based on Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula follows the Count’s arrival in England and the gory consequences for those unfortunate enough to cross his path. As Lucy and Mina fall within his sights, Professor Van Helsing and his allies begin to work out exactly what they’re dealing with and how they might stop him. McNulty’s adaptation condenses Stoker’s sprawling epistolary novel into something more manageable for an evening at the theatre. This is probably wise. “We’d be here for 12 years if we tried to do the whole novel,” Warner says. Ghostlight chose this adaptation because of one important distinction. “Because it was the only one that we found that was classed as a horror and not a gothic romance,” Warner explains. “Part of the idea behind this particular production is to make it disturbing and macabre without adding too many of the romantic elements.” So anybody hoping Dracula and Mina might stare tragically into one another’s eyes while contemplating their forbidden eternal love may need to adjust their expectations. There is desire, Warner explains, but love is another matter. “He’s absolutely not capable of love in this one. Absolutely not.” Warner likens this Dracula more to Nosferatu. He’s predatory, grotesque, and ravenous, but there’s still plenty of personality beneath the fangs. I noticed that in the scene where Van Helsing first meets the Count. Warner shifted from a mysterious, almost amused host into something far more aggressive, while Andrew MacArthur’s Van Helsing held his ground firmly. MacArthur brings a calm authority to the scene, which only seems to encourage Dracula to provoke him harder. “There’s so much gravitas to that role that Andrew brings,” Warner says. In the other scene I watched, Harker and Van Helsing confronted Dracula with a crucifix. Instead of recoiling as expected, Dracula mocked them and kept pushing until the encounter turned physical. And it got loud and bloody very quickly. How do you play a vampire without making him sexy nowadays? “I get to eat so many people,” Warner told me, sounding very pleased with himself. “There’s quite a body count in this show. I pity the poor sucker who’s got to mop the stage afterwards.” Anyone who knows Reagan Warner will know that Dracula isn’t exactly a wild casting departure. He wears almost exclusively black, has long joked about sleeping in a coffin, and has been a fan of the macabre for most of his life. Actually playing Dracula, however, has required more than turning up in his usual wardrobe. “Horror is so difficult,” he says. “The preparation predominantly comes down to how the audience is going to perceive the show. I have to think about how the audience is going to experience it and make sure that it is being conveyed properly.” Much of Warner’s work has gone into Dracula’s voice. “We have discussed the accent at length,” he says. “I think that the accent is inherently a part of the character and his origin. It is probably something I spent the most time on.” Warner is a linguist and admits to being particular about accents. That same attention runs through the production, with the cast looking closely at regional voices, clothing, physicality, and the relationships between their characters. How to freak out an audience without touching them? Ghostlight’s horror plans aren’t confined to bites and blood. Warner says the production uses sensory details designed to unsettle an audience before they quite realise why. “It’s one of the rare shows that employs Theatre of Cruelty techniques,” he explains. “Things that play with the audience, make the audience feel uncomfortable subconsciously, things like scent and sound that you don’t realise is there until it stops, and special effects that will toy with the psychology of a person.” Yes indeed, scent. I sought further clarification but was advised to wait and see. Ghostlight’s soundscape combines classical music, layered voices, unsettling effects, and, naturally, bats. The familiar Toccata and Fugue appears, along with a nod to Swan Lake, which Warner points out plays at the beginning of the classic Bela Lugosi Dracula. “The atmospheric sound has been a big part of this and a big focus, and I think they’ve done a really good job so far.” Sound can tip into haunted-house territory if every entrance, scare, or suspicious moment comes with its own musical exclamation mark. From what I heard in rehearsal, Ghostlight avoids that. The sound designer was constantly tweaking cues, replaying sections, and layering sounds while scenes were being worked around them. Who is going to clean this up? The rehearsal I attended gave just as much attention to the physical aspects of the horror. At one point, Alynta Scott, who plays Lucy, was carefully working through the logistics and movement of a bite. Vampirism requires choreographic direction too. Nearby, Rhys Schwarten as Renfield rehearsed with Alex Andrews, who plays the Child. Having a child performer woven into scenes immediately makes the situation more intriguing and raises the stakes. Warner had only recently seen some of the blood effects when we spoke. “I just absolutely gasped.” Fake blood bags were on every table at rehearsal, waiting patiently for their chance to ruin somebody’s costume. Warner’s own costume includes a heavy, high-quality velvet cape that looks suitably extravagant and very fun to sweep around the stage in. The production isn’t holding back on practical effects either. There will be prosthetics, transformations, physical fights, gore effects, and one performer handling combat while on stilts. Who put this bloody thing together? Along with producing and directing, Yasmin Elahi has designed the set, costumes, and lighting, while the wider team tackles choreography, combat, makeup, effects, sound, and the puzzle of getting an ambitious horror production onto an independent theatre budget. The cast and creatives have been working from shared mood boards and visual references so they’re all inhabiting the same version of Stoker’s world. “We’ve really worked on the aesthetics,” Warner says. “We’ve done a lot of inter-relational work between the characters.” I’ve seen Ghostlight’s past four productions, so I’ve had a pretty good look at the sort of theatrical worlds this company likes building. Their production of The Exorcist remains one of the very few straight horror productions I’ve seen onstage, and I still think about it often. Horror has a different set of toys in a theatre than it does on screen. There’s no camera choosing exactly where you look, no edit to cut away at the right moment, and whatever awful thing is happening is usually only a few metres from your seat. This also happens to be one of several Dracula productions appearing on local stages this year. So, why should audiences make the trip to Beenleigh for this one? For Warner, part of the answer is simply how rarely we get to see horror onstage. “Horror is so seldom done on stage,” he says. “I can only really think of The Woman in Black off the top of my head, and this is adapting a very well-known classic specifically for the stage.” Warner is hardly new to performing either. After years of stage work across almost 100 productions, he arrives at Dracula with plenty of experience behind him, plus a lifelong affection for the character. He’s equally enthusiastic about the people doing it with him. “The cast are phenomenal,” he says. “I’ve worked with many of the cast before and can testify to their hard work and their ethic, and just how good they are to work with.” I only saw two scenes, but there was already plenty happening before the production had put all its teeth in. When I asked Warner to sum it all up, his answer was simple: “Ambitious.” He paused and added, “Dude, I hope it’s good.” With only four performances, audiences won’t have long to find out! Photography: Christopher Sharman Tickets available here: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1579528 Please note: This show contains strobe lighting, loud noises, horror themes, violence, blood and gore, simulated nudity and simulated firearms. Recommended for audiences aged 16+.

Next to Normal Produced by: Millennial Productions Presented at: Ron Hurley Theatre, Seven Hills Date attended: 26 September 2026 Music: Tom Kitt | Book and Lyrics: Brian Yorkey Director: Taylor Atley Associate Director / Intimacy Liaison: Ellen Axford Musical Director: Victoria Keomahavong Production Manager: Jaime O'Donoghue Stage Manager: Daniel Lelic Lighting: Pavani Wickremasinghe | Sound: Lane Agostinelli Costume: Ned Kelly |Props: Lauren Bensted Mental Health Consultant: Maddison Joyce Photography: Jacob Atley “We haven’t had a normal day in years.” I’d never seen Next to Normal before, but with Millennial Productions’ reputation and this creative team behind it, I knew I was in safe hands. The tissues being sold at the bar should probably have warned me what those hands were about to do though... By the end, I understood why. The Goodman family have spent seventeen years arranging themselves around grief and mental illness. Diana (Morgan Heynes) swings between mania and medication. Dan (Conor Ensor) keeps reaching for the next practical fix, as though enough appointments and reassurance might hold the house together. Natalie (Madeline Harper) retreats into piano and perfection. Gabe (Jackson Hughesman) hovers close to Diana, loving and unsettling in equal measure. Henry (August Cocks) tries to reach Natalie from outside the family’s orbit as her sweetly persistent boyfriend. Diana’s psychiatrists, Dr Fine and Dr Madden (both played by Sam Ford), are entrusted with decisions that can alter the shape of her life. Director Taylor Atley places the Goodmans in a recognisably suburban home where they move around each other on autopilot. Lauren Bensted’s props fill it with the usual family clutter, right down to medication bottles scattered across the kitchen bench. A raised level stretches above the set, creating space for characters who are present yet seem detached from the reality below. Pavani Wickremasinghe’s lighting, including LED strips framing the upper level and doorway, shifts the house between warmth, unease, memory, and the cooler world of treatment while the scenery itself stays fixed. That domestic ‘normality’ feeds straight into “Just Another Day”. Everyone races through the morning, performing the rhythms of a functioning family while the routine is already fraying around the edges. Brian Yorkey’s writing can jump from observational humour to absolutely vicious within moments, and this production embraces that whiplash. “It’s Gonna Be Good” lets the room relax into laughter before “You Don’t Know” tears straight through it with Diana’s rage. Nobody receives the courtesy of one emotion at a time. Morgan Heynes has an enormous task as Diana, vocally and dramatically, and never flattens her into a diagnosis. Her acting keeps Diana mercurial: she adores her family, resents them, reaches for help, rejects it, and describes herself with the beautifully understated, “My mum called me high-spirited” (relatable). Heynes’ control of those shifts is as impressive as her singing. In “I Miss the Mountains”, Diana has reached the point where medication has dulled everything, including the parts of herself she misses. Heynes changes her vocal texture as the song grows, letting rough cries break through the cleaner phrases until the desire to feel anything becomes physical. Later, following ECT, she alters Diana’s entire presence. Her gaze disconnects, her responses arrive differently, and familiar people seem to be standing in the wrong places inside her own life. The contrast is unnerving, showing just how much detail Heynes has built into Diana beyond the score. Jackson Hughesman as Gabe initially appears protective, a son hovering near his mother when she needs him. The gentleness of his character makes his eventual pull over Diana far more disturbing. In “I’m Alive”, Hughesman unleashes a voice full of riffs, height, and rock power, but distress and torment sit underneath all of it. Gabe wants to remain. He wants to be remembered, not erased. Depending on where Diana is emotionally, he shifts between comfort, grief, temptation, and threat. His physical presence feeds that unease. He climbs onto furniture, looms above the family, and draws Diana towards the promise of peace with a magnetic insistence. He occupies the house completely while remaining unreachable to everyone living outside Diana’s reality. And then the production turns Gabe towards Dan. I won't discuss that sequence in detail because I’d like at least one other unsuspecting person to suffer as I did. Ensor and Hughesman’s “I Am the One” had people all around me wiping their faces. Ensor’s reaction strips away years of repression in seconds. Conor Ensor is excellent at showing exhaustion without playing Dan as permanently defeated. Earlier, “I’ve Been” gives him space to admit what maintaining this family has cost him. His support for Diana is loving, desperate, and increasingly threadbare. The production also lets us see the much younger Dan and Diana, full of hope at 22, before parenthood and loss rearranged their lives and love. Natalie is dealing with a different kind of disappearance. She’s gifted, driven, embarrassed by her family, frightened by what she sees happening to her mother, and woefully aware of how frequently she is overlooked. “You tend to miss a lot of things,” she tells Diana. Madeline Harper has a beautiful, expressive voice that rises easily through Kitt’s demanding score. In “Superboy and the Invisible Girl”, resentment keeps cracking wounds open, while “Catch Me I’m Falling” builds into the panic of a daughter asking to be noticed before she disappears completely. And when Diana decides to stop taking her medication, Natalie begins self-medicating. August Cocks brings a welcome softness to Henry, keeping him warm, earnest, and slightly awkward. His “This planet is pretty much broken beyond all repair” philosophy is perhaps not the cheeriest opening gambit for teenage romance, but his scenes with Harper have an easy sweetness that lets Natalie briefly drop the hyper-achiever armour. Their relationship gives the show room to breathe, even as the chaos at home keeps pressing in. Sam Ford’s doubling as Dr Fine and Dr Madden marks one of the production’s more theatrical departures from the Goodman household. Diana’s treatment suddenly resembles a rock concert, her psychiatrist elevated into “Doctor Rock” as medications, diagnoses, and treatment options fly at her. The humour evaporates once those choices carry frightening consequences. Diana needs medical care, yet handing parts of her mind and body over to treatment is terrifying. When the pain of living is unbearable, which is worse: the illness, or what the treatment takes from her? Is feeling nothing preferable to feeling everything? With Maddison Joyce as mental health consultant and Ellen Axford as intimacy liaison, the production approaches Diana’s illness as lived experience rather than spectacle. And Dan and Natalie’s exhaustion, neglect, and fear are given equal weight. Musically, this cast is formidable. Victoria Keomahavong guides a score that barely gives its performers time to breathe, and the layered harmonies in numbers like “Song of Forgetting” are so beautifully controlled. The main issue is sound balance. At points, the underscoring sits too loudly beneath dialogue and lyrics, swallowing lines that carry important information in an already dense story. Still, this is a musical built around people missing things. Diana loses pieces of her memory, Natalie is missed in plain sight, and Dan hides grief from himself. Next to Normal is brutal, but Millennial Productions doesn’t leave us entirely in the dark. “Light” arrives as a beautiful sliver of hope after so much trying, failing, and trying again. Around me, the audience quietly wept and gathered themselves after everything that came before.

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< Back BALLET: Bespoke - Queensland Ballet 2 Oct 2026 Season: October 2nd - 17th, 2026 Title: Bespoke Presented By: Queensland Ballet Genre: Contemporary Ballet / Dance Synopsis: Queensland Ballet’s contemporary series returns with three world premiere works exploring identity, belonging, climate change and rebellion. Choreographers Claire Voss, Victor Zarallo and Paul Knobloch collaborate with composers and designers to create new works combining movement, music and design. Written By: Original works by Claire Voss, Victor Zarallo and Paul Knobloch Performance Dates: 2–17 October 2026 Performance Times: 2 October – 7:30pm 3 October – 1:30pm & 7:30pm 7 October – 6:30pm 8–9 October – 7:30pm 10 October – 1:30pm & 7:30pm 11 October – 1:30pm 15–16 October – 7:30pm 17 October – 1:30pm & 7:30pm Performance Location and Address: Talbot Theatre, Thomas Dixon Centre, 406 Montague Road, West End QLD 4101 Ticket Costs: Adult $89 | Concession $76 | 30 & Under $72 | Child $45 | Group 6+ $76 | School Group $35 Ticket Link: Book Tickets – Queensland Ballet Warnings: Likely to contain strobe lighting, theatrical haze and smoke effects. Recommended Age: All ages Duration: 2 hours, including one 20-minute interval and one 25-minute interval. Creative Team: Claire Voss, Victor Zarallo & Paul Knobloch – Choreographers | Connor D’Netto, Brady Watkins & Matej Perunicic – Composers | Michelle Potts & Bethany Cordwell – Costume Designers | Anthony Lee & Matthew Allan – Lighting Designers Production Website: Queensland Ballet – Bespoke Other information: The season comprises three new works: Where the Water Once Was , What Remains and Between the Line . The 17 October 1:30pm performance includes an Auslan-interpreted post-performance Q&A. Previous Next

< Back THEATRE: Picnic at Hanging Rock - Act1 Theatre 2 Oct 2026 Season: October 2nd - 18th, 2026 Title: Picnic at Hanging Rock Presented By: Act 1 Theatre Genre: Drama / Mystery / Australian Gothic Synopsis: On Valentine’s Day 1900, three schoolgirls and their teacher mysteriously disappear during a picnic at Hanging Rock. Years later, the unanswered questions surrounding their disappearance continue to haunt those left behind in this atmospheric adaptation of the iconic Australian novel. Written By: Tom Wright, adapted from the novel by Joan Lindsay Performance Dates: 2–18 October 2026 Performance Times: Fridays & Saturdays – 7:30pm | Sundays – 2:00pm Performance Location and Address: Act 1 Theatre, 238 Gympie Road, Strathpine QLD 4500 Ticket Costs: Adult $30 | Concession $25 | Member $20 Ticket Link: Book Tickets – Humanitix Warnings: Mature themes and references to death and disappearance Duration: Approximately 90 minutes, no interval Production Website: Act 1 Theatre Previous Next