One man and a toad
The classic children’s tale The Wind in the Willows gets a new lease of life as a one-man stage show by Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre, with Black Diggers and Playschool star Luke Carroll playing not one but all four main characters. Ratty, Mole and Badger attempt to contain the exuberant but foolish Mr Toad as he careens from one misadventure to the next, all in the hope of carving out a little more time to mess around in boats.
Wind in the Willows is at the Roundhouse theatre, Brisbane from 7 to 17 January 2015
Have films, will travel
Life is too short to watch bad movies. The Travelling Film Festival lands in the Top End in February with six feature films and three Australian shorts, screening in Katherine. The festival opens with Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner, starring Timothy Spall as the eccentric British painter. Other highlights include Still Alice, starring Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin, Folies Bergere with Isabelle Huppert, and the rather curious Icelandic film Of Horses and Men.
The Travelling Film festival is at the Katherine Cinema 3 from 6 to 8 February
Here and there
She’s back. Aria award-winning musician Megan Washington has announced she will take her return-to-form album There There on the road in February, playing Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth, taking a host of emerging talent along with her. Montaigne and Greg Chiapello will support her on her East Coast and Adelaide shows, while Timothy Nelson & The Infidels will open her Perth Show.
Megan Washington plays Melbourne on 13 February, before Brisbane (14 February), Sydney (21 February), Adelaide (27 February) and Perth (28 February)
Up all night
Who needs sleep anyway? White Night Melbourne returns on 21 February for the annual all night festival of music, visual arts, performance and light shows. Stretching across nine city precincts including the Yarra River, Alexandra Gardens and Melbourne museum, the event features giant lotus leaves and Bollywood pontoons at Sita’s Gardens, a spectacular light projection onto the Royal Exhibition building entitled 4 Elements and a crowd of neon stick figure dancing outside the NGV.
White Night Melbourne runs from 7pm to 7am on 21 February across the city
Fringe dwellers
Naked magicians, a Mississippi murderer, Japanese paper theatre – if it’s Perth, it must be fringe time. In 2015, the always surprising, occasionally shocking program will include internationally-beloved variety show La Soiree, American Horror Story performance artist Mat Fraser and his burlesque star wife Julie Atlas Muz in their boundary pushing show The Freak and the Showgirl and the life and times of Peggy Lee as presented by singing sextet The Darling Buds of May.
Perth fringe festival runs from 23 January to 22 February across the city, including central hub, the Urban Orchard
