This 50-minute show designed for primary school, children, can be seen in the Heath Ledger Theatre, within the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia, 174-176 William Street in Perth,

The set is stunning. Designer Jonathon Oxlade, who studied illustration and sculpture at Queensland University, has produced a semi-symbolic, forest of trees, logs and bushes, all built of unadorned, pine plywood, and yet it looked more realistic than the usual highly adorned, artistic representation.

Little Red Heidi Hood’s delightful A-frame house is presented in cross-section, so the audience can see the house interior. Upstairs is the bedroom, and below a sitting room with a large, ‘talking’ armchair. The house is colourfully furnished. The Lighting Designer, Chris Petridis is from South Australia; he produced great dramatic effects without being too frightening for the children. Harry Covill’s soundscape was first class, but perhaps replayed at times, a little too loudly, slightly overpowering the dialogue.

The whole appearance is that of a vibrant page, straight from a fairy-tale book. Very clever.

         The television reporter, (Ellen Steele) with microphone in hand, introduces us to the living forest, pointing out Little Heidi Hood’s isolated house in the woods. We can see Heidi (Emma J Hawkins) is still in bed. Living in such an isolated place, she has a lonely existence; in fact, she has no friends.

         The reporter explains that the wolf who lives in the wood is not ‘bad’, just misunderstood and very shy. We are introduced to the wolf (Patrick Graham), who is a badly dressed, normal man but with fluffy ears and fangs for teeth. He lives in the forest with his obnoxious, overpowering mother (Ellen Steele).

       Poor Wolfie has no friends; in fact everyone seems frightened of him. As the Wolf wanders towards Heidi’s house, the ‘wolf detection system’ starts. Alarms flash and loud horns bellow.

       What will happen when poor Heidi actually meets Wolfie?

This is fun-packed, with an inspired script that is verging on pantomime. The show has real magic – the kids gasped, dancing, acrobatics, ‘a baddie’ – boo hiss, a loveable heroine and plenty of fun. There is colour and enchanting music.

Director Rosemary Myers has been nominated numerous times for Helpmann Awards. The 2015 movie ‘Girl Asleep’, which was also written by Matthew, won several Film Festival awards. This show really sparkled. The children really empathised with the poor downtrodden wolf, who even had sympathisers shouting advice to him.

The entertainment literally bounced along, with the energetic movement and choreography designed by Carol Wellman Kelly. At around 3 feet high, Emma (Heidi) surprised the children in the audience when she did several fast moving dance routines and acrobatics. Emma’s warmth and cheeky expression won over every heart in the house.

This show is certainly for 6 or 7 year olds upwards, but everyone left the auditorium with a large smile. The children deserve and recognise such quality. Great show.

Sarah Kane dedicated this, possibly her best piece, to the author Mark Ravenhill, another wonderful writer of a similar age and daring style. Ravenhill has described her writing as ‘achieving canonical status’.

This powerful and dark, 1-hour play is based around the pain found in love; it is recommended for audiences over 16 yrs. It is being presented by the highly driven, WA Youth Theatre Company in the Theatre Underground Studio, within the State Theatre Centre, Northbridge each evening at 7.30 pm until Saturday 11th June.

The lyrics, ‘An Echo, A Stain’ on Björk’s 2001 album ‘Vespertine’ are based on this play.

The director played occasional soft chords on a bass guitar as a backing.

Crave takes place in an abstract world. The four actors stand static and facing the audience, on a low dais. The lighting design was by Dylan Dorotich-O’Keefe.

The author did not provide context, stage directions or descriptions of the four characters. Simply known as A, B, C and M. ‘A’ having the main, larger passages.

The two cast alternated performances. I saw cast two.

A: was Declan Brown alternating with Luke Binetti,

B: was Odne Stenseth and George Ashforth

C: was Ally Harris and Katherine Langford

M: was Daisy Coyle and Megan Hollier

Directed by the company’s artistic director, Renato Fabretti is honoured and eager to present ‘Crave’, a conversation on mental health amongst four WA’s young adults. Renato was assisted in his directing by Eloise Carter.

This ground breaking work does not dodge the complexities and realities of mental health, but embraces them. Sarah Kane, who tragically suicided, asked that the players should not simply ‘act’ their parts, but in an advanced Mike Leigh style of acting, where they should live, experience and be totally absorbed by them, for weeks before performing.

The cast had a nightmare script that comprised mainly of short snappy sentences, being delivered almost at random from each of the four characters. This meant that the normal continuity and feeding each other a line disappeared. The topics and events – some real, some imagined – that each actor described included rape, incest, paedophilia, anorexia, drug addiction, mental instability, murder and suicide, all in an unsystematic manner and so the script had to be thoroughly learned to ensure flow.

The delivery was precise, the diction clear, the pace perhaps a little too fast but a great deal of admiration must go to the cast for never dropping a line or missing a beat. I did however find that the vocal range was limited in all four actors, and that another register or lower octave would have enhanced their feelings.

There was some emotion in the complex performances, but the real depth, inner suffering and anger at the misery perpetrated upon them did not really come through. Good performances, but not quite enough experience behind these young actors.

This week, another friend of the director, Kate Dickie (of ‘Game of Thrones’ fame) has just become a Scottish ambassador for Alzheimer’s.

Like all of Sarah Kane’s plays, this is a drama that demanded so much more of this bold cast of young performers – their honesty, sensitivity, courage and their SOULS.