2026: Bombshells by Joanna Murray-Smith

 

 

Bombshells by Joanna Murray-Smith.  Echo Theatre at The Q, Queanbeyan, Thurs – Sat August 27-29, 2026

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Aug 27

Cast
Louise Bennet as Tiggy Entwhistle (a prickly cactus lover)
Ella Buckley as Theresa McTerry (an anxious bride-to-be)
Yanina Clifton as Meryl Davenport (a young mother of three)
Lainie Hart as Winsome Webster (a widow longing for the unexpected)
Sally Taylor as Mary O'Donnell (a high school student entering a talent quest)

Creative & Production Team
Playwright: Joanna Murray-Smith
Director: Jordan Best
Production Design: Roz Hall and Jordan Best
Lighting Design: Linda Buck
Sound Design & Music: Jordan Best and William Best
Stage Manager: Roni Wilkinson


Joanna Murray-Smith’s play Bombshells and its presentation by Jordan Best is a tragi-comic view of women as wives.  The central theme is, don’t make assumptions, expect the unexpected – and enjoy, especially in the extraordinary final scene as Lainie Hart plays the widow, Winsome Webster, reading a novel to a blind man.

I have wondered if this play should be presented to teenage boys and girls, but remembering back ten years before my 60 years of marriage, at age 15 it would probably have frightened me.  I see that Murray-Smith was nearly 40 when she wrote the script – as a series of monologues by a single actress – and I suggest one needs at least that much experience to fully appreciate both the humour and the truths in the play.

Jordan Best’s stage design, with Linda Buck’s lighting, taking us to each location – and briefly showing us each of the characters as time goes on between each scene – makes the presentation of the five monologues a lively visual experience, (watch out particularly for the cactus plants!), in a different way from the single actress design – with quick changes between scenes  – though I know other productions of this kind have been very successful, such as at Ensemble Theatre in 2013, ( see Sandra Bates speaking at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5vE5ETNRqs&themeRefresh=1 )

I think the variety of physiques, choreography and voices in The Q’s production opens up the play theatrically – showing us five equally stunning performers, emphasising the unexpected.

With only two more performances tonight and tomorrow at The Q, when such a quality production obviously should have an extensive run, I’m pleased to find that AI tells me:

“The production will embark on a month-long tour visiting 11 locations across New South Wales. This extensive route includes stops at the Cowra Civic Centre, Blue Mountains Theatre in Springwood, Wollondilly Performing Arts Centre in Picton, Jetty Memorial Theatre in Coffs Harbour, Glasshouse in Port Macquarie, Dubbo Regional Theatre & Convention Centre, Bathurst, Byron Bay, and Sydney.”

If you can’t get to Queanbeyan, just make sure you take a trip – whatever the petrol costs if you can't afford electric yet – since “Bombshells is featured as part of a dedicated Green Program. Artistic Director Jordan Best purposefully designed the production from its inception to minimize its carbon footprint. The entire set, props, and costumes are 100% second-hand and carefully configured to fit inside a single transport van, completely bypassing the need for heavy freight trucks.”

I can promise you can expect the unexpected will be brilliant.  Not to be missed. 

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra 

2026: Saplings - Australian Theatre for Young People

 

 

Saplings by Hannah Belanszky.  Australian Theatre for Young People at The Q, Queanbeyan, Saturday, 22 August 2026, 2pm & 7:30pm

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 22, 7:30pm

Creative & Production Team
Yuwaalaray Playwright / Writer: Hannah Belanszky
Kalkadoon Director: Abbie-lee Lewis
Associate Director & Producer: Ryan Whitworth-Jones
Dramaturg: Jane FitzGerald; Co-Set & Costume Designer: Angela Doherty; Co-Set & Lighting Designer: Morgan Moroney
Composer & Sound Designer: Michael Weir; Fight Director: Tim Dashwood

Production Manager: Harry Dowling / Abbey Pace
Stage Manager: Milly Grindrod; Producer: Hayden Tonazzi
Workshop Facilitator: George Kemp

Cast (2026 National Tour):
Talijah Blackman-Corowa
Maliyan Blair
Sam Harmon
Danny Howard


Yani wants to go to the Easter Show, Kai wants a sense of home, Shanika wants her Mum back, and Lachlan… well, he just wants his bowl of noodles. But when the justice system is all that stands between these young people and what they want, it raises an important question: how do young people grow when the system keeps cutting them down? This poetic, personal and unexpected production will leave you asking who’s really to blame.
https://www.atyp.com.au/productions/saplings 

Main Youth Characters:
Yani: A young person who simply wants to experience and have fun at the Easter Show.
Lachlan: A teenager out on bail who is hungry and fixated on getting a simple bowl of noodles.
Shanika: A young girl dealing with the pain of missing her mother.
Kai: A character feeling profoundly lost and isolated by the world around them

___________________________________________________________________________________

I must be honest and admit that, at age 85 and needing hearing aids, RAP is not my thing.  Not because of what may be said, but because last night I could understand only an occasional word with everything being so rapidly spoken throughout the play.  

According to ATYP, “Four talented young actors take on multiple roles in this poetic, personal, and unexpected production”, but I can find no record of which actors played which of the four main characters.  I could understand ‘Shanika’ and, I think, ‘Lachlan’, but I think it was Kai, whose loud angry voice until the very last scene, was almost completely incomprehensible to me.

On the other hand, I could see and feel the frustrations of these children, apparently of a dysfunctional family, taking what they saw as opportunities, being jailed for petty thefts without help from self-interested lawyers – until their sister realises she must simply find her own way; while one brother finds symbolic purpose, particularly as a First Nations person, in working for growing native Australian trees and flowers; and finally coming together with his deeply angry brother, forming a sensible brotherhood in that very last scene.

I see the production as an original form, almost of dance-drama – where movement choreography, and sound through voice and recordings, is used to create the characters, and the meaning of the situation is played out in action.

For Canberrans and Queanbeyanites, I am reminded of the Canberra Dance Theatre and the work of Stephanie Burridge in the 1990s, in my feature article for The Canberra Times at https://frankmckone2.blogspot.com/1998/03/1998-feature-article-on-stephanie.html about her show Journey.

Australian Theatre for Young People has a long history of taking an original approach, exemplified once again to our benefit in Saplings.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2026: The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, adapted for stage

 

 

 

 SPOILER ALERT

 The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins & Dreamworks Film, adapted by Rachel Wagstaff & Duncan Abel.

Mockingbird Theatre at Belconnen Arts Centre, Canberra, August 5 – 22 2026

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Aug 15

Cast
Rachel Watson – Morgan HeathWilliams; Tom Watson – Robert Weardon
Scott Hipwell – Timothy Cusack; Megan Hipwell – Susie Todd
Kamal Abdic – Ankush Singh Khanchi
Detective Inspector Gaskill – Paul Sweeney
Anna Watson – Sabrina Fu

Production Team
Director/Designer – Chris Baldock
Assistant Director – Dale Rheynolds
Stage Manager and Tech Operator – Aoife McFoley
Lighting Design – Rhiley Winnett and Chris Baldock
Projections and Video Design – Chris Baldock
Sound and Music Design – Chris Baldock
Costumes and Props – Chris Baldock, Dale Rheynolds and the cast
Intimacy Consultant – Steph Evans


The purpose of the best theatre is never merely to entertain, but, in doing so, it is to engage us in better understanding of ourselves, individually and as members of society.

The seemingly ironically named Mockingbird Theatre’s choice of the theme of domestic violence is vindicated this very morning as I write, by John Hanscombe’s The Echidna article, Sunday August 16 2026, in The Canberra Times: “A number that shames us all”.

“So far this year – and this number will in all likelihood be out of date by the time you read it – 30 women have been killed, according to the Counting Dead Women Australia register, too often by men known to them.  Partners, husbands, sons.”

Chris Baldock’s directing and design of this stage adaptation of the Paula Hawkins novel, and the quality of realism he achieves with his excellent team of actors, makes this production of The Girl on the Train essential viewing.  Only the very ending scene is questionable, as I see it, from a drama point of view.

The original novel raises a question of its scientific veracity, and a source such as the University of Warsaw : Tetiana Grebeniuk. Narrative Unreliability in Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on the Train as a Strategy of Reader Immersion supports the science and says about reading the novel – 
“Attention is focused on two components of reader gratification as manifest in Hawkins’ novel: intellectual satisfaction due to the solution of the murder mystery (temporal immersion), as well as satisfaction resulting from the protagonist’s psychic recovery and revenge (emotional immersion)”.

https://www.researchgate.net/4050_Tetiana_Grebeniuk

Morgan Heath Williams is remarkable in creating an entirely realistic characterisation of that protagonist, Rachel Watson, described in Google AI as exhibiting – 

Reality invalidation: The antagonist exploits Rachel's self-doubt and drinking habits to make her believe she caused her own blackouts and violent behavior.

Self-gaslighting: Victims under prolonged abuse often internalize blame, convincing themselves their own perceptions are entirely untrustworthy.

Coercive control: The dynamic isolates the victim emotionally, creating total reliance on the abuser's version of events.

That antagonist is Tom Watson, played eerily by Robert Wearden as the least likely to be the murderer until finally found out by his ex-wife Rachel’s determination to find the truth.

The search for the truth makes the play something like a Sophocles tragedy – mythical but essential for understanding why such things happen.  On this point, in the ending scene, when Tom takes the child, his child, onto the railway track, I – and my wife – felt the tragedy would have reached its ultimate awfulness if the child had not been retrieved just in time, and had been killed by the train with him, in what could be seen as Tom’s suicide.

Of course, it was still not exactly a happy ending, if you imagine that baby growing up; but that ending softened, perhaps weakened, the dramatic effect – compared, I think, with the numbers reported in John Hanscombe’s article.

For example, Rosie Batty’s story, of her husband’s killing of their son Luke, and his threatening and then being killed by police, and her becoming a prominent domestic violence campaigner and being named the 2015 Australian of the Year, takes us from fiction to fact.  And gives Mockingbird’s The Girl on the Train all the justification it needs for its presentation today.

Not to be missed – and hopefully for an extended season or even tour, considering that a strength of the production is its in-the-round intimacy for a necessarily quite small audience.  Less is more, I suggest.

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2026: The Winter's Tale - Mill Theatre

 

 

The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare.  The Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra. August 5-15 2026 inc. previews.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening night August 12

Cast

Aleksis Andreitchenko: Hermione and Perdita
Dakota Paull: Cleomenes, Archidamus, and Shepherd
Jarrah Palethorpe: Polixenes; Jennifer Noveski: Emilia and Mariner
Joanna Tollis: Camillo and Officer; Max Wilson: Leontes
Tabby Silberman: Paulina and Mamillius
Nick Parr: Antigonus and Florizel
Phoebe Chua: Female & Non-Binary Contingency Actor
Chipz Jin: Contingency Actor

Production Team

Director: Heidi Silberman; Production Designer: Tania Jobson
Production Stage Manager: Steph Evans
Lighting Designer: Will Smith; Sound Designer: Lexi Sekuless
Technical Directors and Mentors: Ezekiel Chalmers, Andrew Snell and Tim Sekuless
Assistant Production Designer: Chris Jobson; Verse Nurse: Lexi Sekuless
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena
Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions

Major Sponsor: Sidestage
Front of House: Heidi Silberman and Lexi Sekuless


Energy and enthusiasm are the life blood of theatre.  The Mill Theatre tonight was bursting out all over.  Does it matter that not every Shakespearen syllable is reverently enunciated?  Not a jot, in this expressionist style, telling us this weird Ancient Greeky myth about a baby found by a shepherdess who turns out to be a king’s daughter.

Not quite the Oedipus Rex story, but certainly about familial relationships going astray – with love in a happy ending, despite some family violence on the way.  Just the thing for modern times, and The Mill presentation of “its first-ever Youth Production, created for emerging actors aged 18-25.  More than a training opportunity, this is a fully realised Mill Theatre production, created to the same professional standards and production values as every show in our mainstage season.”

From this production, full of action, very loud noises off (effectively ‘on’ in the tiny Mill Theatre), fast and forceful speaking and tyrannical decision-making (some seriously reminding me of President Trump), you might think Will wrote this as a young actor challenging social expectations, perhaps just like today’s cast, full of instant emotional reactions.

I’m not unhappy with director Heidi Silberman’s take on the play – often seeming like a satirical comedy version of the myth, rather than taking it too seriously.  And yet I have to admit that when Bell Shakespeare put it on in 2014 (see https://frankmckone2.blogspot.com/search?q=Winter%27s+Tale+2014), I was equally impressed with seeing the play as magical and sad, set in a children’s nursery.

In fact Shakespeare wrote The Winter’s Tale in 1610, in his mid-forties, and produced it at The Globe in 1611, in the period scholars call his “late romantic”, making it a metaphorical play, picked up again in The Tempest, about power in society.

In the end, this youthful energy in The Mill production achieves Shakespeare’s end – that it is only love that holds us together.  And you feel that love is there among this young team of actors – surely the message we all need to appreciate in theatre.

A new Mill Theatre original – well worth watching.

©Frank McKone, Canberra