We had a busy day yesterday with both a matinee and evening show. Lovely audiences in both.
Crammed in among the 74 impeccably behaved school students at the 1pm show, was reviewer Matthew Pentelis from Radio 5AA.

His review is up on their website this morning and we love it so much, I've pasted it all below.

Shakespeare's Queens: She-wolves and Serpents
Review 5AA 1/03/2012
Matthew Pantelis

I have to confess at the start I am a fan of William Shakespeare, so the opportunity to see most of his Queens in action, even for a few minutes each, was one too good to pass up.

It’s not the Globe, but the 100 seat Bakehouse Theatre in Angas Street has the intimacy in which the bard’s plays would have been staged in his day and it’s in that vein Shakespeare (Patrick Trumper) returns to life along with Queen Elizabeth I (Kath Perry) and Mary Queen of Scots (Rachel Ferris).

After a brief setting of the scene in which Shakespeare is introduced to 2012 by the two queens debating the meaningful use of a husband king, this talented trio then proceeds to weave the audience through no less than 14 plays and some 20 Queens, acting out with the barest of props, a few minutes of each in which a Queen is centre stage.

The use of lighting in the theatre is superb and used to effect to capture the mood of, in one segment, the murder of Macbeth. This haunting scene was one of a number which left me wanting more and Ferris is gripping as a disturbed Lady M.

She doesn’t upstage but complements Perry throughout. The latter is brilliant as Queen Mary from Henry 6, who lingers, bitter and vengeful in Richard 3 and as a vulnerable Katherine to Henry 8. Perry has wonderful gravitas used to effect the poignancy and emotion essential to convey the drama in Shakespeare’s histories. Ferris in turn has fun and comic timing, brilliantly portraying a jealous Cleopatra being told by a messenger her lover Marc Antony has married Octavia, while her Puck borrows from Lord of the Rings. My only disappointment, again, is some of the scenes were too short!

The links between the plays are clever too, particularly with Ferris’s Scottish Queen Mary using the opportunity presented in some to take little digs at Elizabeth I for her own beheading and the banter between these two is good fun.

But it’s not just about the Queens.

Trumper also excels in the Kingly roles, particularly playing Richard 3 wooing the just widowed Lady Anne with the line bandied around in one form or another in many a pub on a Friday night, “Was ever a woman in this humour wooed...and won? I’ll have her, but not keep her long.” It’s an interesting selection of a quote; the play focuses on queens but when all’s said and done, it’s the guys who win through.

The cast perform multiple roles in a number of the plays and pull it off well. In Henry 6, Trumper plays Suffolk, the Duke of York and King Henry within a few minutes of each other with props cleverly shown to the audience in advance. There is the opportunity for confusion but with the slightest degree of concentration, you'll get through it.

I couldn't help but marvel that even for such an accomplished cast with a fair degree of Shakespeare under their collective belts, covering so much of the bard so quickly must take great concentration, as does flicking from English, French and cockney accents throughout.

Clever use too, I thought, of Hamlet’s final line in his play to set the return of the principal characters to their own eras.

It's good fun, whether you're a fan of Shakespeare or if you’ve ever wondered whether to go, or not to go, definitely, go. This is the best overview of some of his she-wolves and serpents you will ever have the pleasure of seeing. I’ll guarantee you’ll walk out wishing it was longer.