Keith Gow, Writer

  Mark Diaco as Pale in Burn This After attending the funeral of her roommate Robbie, and his partner Dom, killed in a freak boating accident, Anna and her other roommate, Larry, must deal with the heartbreak of their sudden loss. Soon joining them is Anna’s long-time boyfriend, Burton, and later – in the middle of the night – Robbie’s brother, Pale. Together, they dance around their feelings, trying to deal with their grief – alternating between opening up to each other and shutting down. Lanford Wilson’s play was first performed off-Broadway in 1987 and while the text gives the actors a lot to play with, this new production at 45 Downstairs made me wonder, “Why now?” The question is a double-edged sword; some plays are just so good, that reviving them can be relevant any time. Some plays, even if they are dated, can feel like interesting time capsules – an insight into a time gone by, a world that no longer exists. “Why now” can be a question for creatives, to dig into why it’s a

  “You are here At the start of a moment On the edge of the world…” I first saw Come from Away on stage eighteen months ago , though I had listened to the cast recording before that and had seen a staged development reading, streamed online many years ago. Back before streaming theatre and readings was a regular occurrence. A lot has changed in the last year and a half. When I first saw the show, it was moving and uplifting piece of history – based on the real lives of people in Gander, Newfoundland on September 11 th , 2001. It sparked memories of that day, for good and bad, and reminded me of the human-interest stories from the time – from Gander itself, but also of communities all over working together to deal with the traumatic fallout from the day. Returning to the show, as well as to large-scale musical-theatre for the first time since the pandemic closed theatres across the world in March 2020, the show felt much more present, more real and was a far more emotional ex

  Michelle Myers in And Then She Became A Chair A woman emerges from the darkness, head covered, moving slowly, weighted bags are attached to her dress and drag along the ground behind her. She is in a waiting room. A doctor’s office. A hospice. Inside a commercial begging her to start a new life in Queensland. This is purgatory. Michelle Myer’s one-woman performance, And Then She Became A Chair , is an unsettling, confronting and poetic study in grief. We watch as a woman deals with the inevitable death of her mother, remembering absurd moments of her life, of their lives, in the years, weeks and days leading up to… C.S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed , a reflection on the passing of his wife, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” And it’s this observation that Michelle explores in this work – grief being the fear of loss, the fear of the unknown and the fear of what comes next. It’s interesting that the first work of theatre I have seen this year is focused so mu