Cassie Tongue

Sydney

Theatre and Comics Critic at Freelance

Theatre Reviewer and Critic at Time Out Sydney

theatre critic, musicals critic, arts & culture writer. ask me about the x-men. she/her. your teacher says take off your robes

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Articles

Reality bites in STC’s Happy Days

1 month ago | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Cassie Tongue

Inside Wharf 1 Theatre sits a constructed, constrained tableau, where a black box in the playing space marks out a narrowed, forced proscenium. Inside that is a distinctly unreal grey mound, lightly textured but too hard and with too much shine to read as rock or earth, backdropped by clean, white nothing. It’s so unlike any space in nature – so clear in its refusal to conjure a relatable image of a world we know – that it feels both abstractly artistic and scientific.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown review - a gorgeous take on a flawed musical

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Cassie Tongue

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is one of those films you really should have on your bucket list. Pedro Almodóvar’s 1988 Spanish farce (currently streaming on SBS on Demand) follows actress Pepa, whose lover Iván has broken up with her over answering machine, and her long day trying to get in touch with him. Along the way, she collides with Iván’s ex-wife, a young couple who turn out to also be connected to him, and her best friend Candela. Men are ruining everyone’s day.
Gladys: A Musical Affair review - Berejiklian parody show is too flimsy to be funny

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Cassie Tongue

Five years ago, locked in our homes and isolated from our loved ones, we invented new rituals to keep ourselves sane. We baked bread. We played trivia with friends on Zoom. We replaced going to the theatre with binge-watching 237 episodes of medical drama Grey’s Anatomy – twice. (Or was that just me?)And for many of us in New South Wales, the daily 11am coronavirus press conferences led by then-premier Gladys Berejiklian became sacred appointment television.
Les Misérables: The Arena Spectacular review - an irresistible, 40th anniversary love letter

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Cassie Tongue

If any musical deserves the arena treatment, it’s Les Misérables. Hear me out! Like the best pop and rock music gigs, Les Mis is stacked with emotional bangers, from top to bottom. From almost the very beginning of its life on stage, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil’s adaptation of Victor Hugo’s brick of a novel has presented its music in concert.
Sara Pascoe: I Am a Strange Gloop review - motherhood as Sisyphean struggle

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Cassie Tongue

One must imagine Sisyphus happy. So goes the oft-quoted conclusion of Albert Camus’ 1942 treatise The Myth of Sisyphus – comparing all of human existence to an endless struggle. Camus has also been playing on the UK comedian Sara Pascoe’s mind, and she has a bone or two to pick with the French author in her show I Am a Strange Gloop; the name is an equally cerebral reference to a book by the philosopher Douglas Hofstadter.
Bloom seeks dignity within a broken system

2 months ago | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Cassie Tongue

If you were a cash-strapped university student, would you accept an offer of free room and board at an aged-care home? It’s a great deal, except for the one small as-advertised catch: “Some light duties required.”Finn (Slone Sudiro), who was just kicked out of a flat-share, has no other choice. He wheels his bike over to Pine Grove Aged Care to take up the offer just as Rose (Evelyn Krape) checks in as a resident.
This sweetly optimistic tale might be just what we need right now

2 months ago | theage.com.au | John Shand |Peter McCallum |Cassie Tongue

By John Shand, Peter McCallum and Cassie Tongue April 6, 2025 — 12.56pm, register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for laterAdd articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. MUSICAL THEATREAnnieCapitol Theatre, April 3Reviewed by CASSIE TONGUE★★★½That little redheaded orphan is back again. The comic strip-turned-musical has spawned three films, a live TV staging, and more than one sequel.
The Producers review – zingy Mel Brooks comedy goes big and broad

2 months ago | msn.com | Cassie Tongue

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The Producers review - zingy Mel Brooks comedy goes big and broad

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Cassie Tongue

The beauty of the Hayes theatre, Sydney’s home for boutique musical theatre, is also its greatest challenge: the space is tiny. With Broadway-sized ambitions and a seating capacity of just 110, the works that flourish here are those that are adapted to a more intimate scale – keeping the razzle dazzle, but bringing the humanity of the actors to the fore. You can count every bead of sweat and read each face; you have to go deep as well as broad to really make a Hayes show sing.
Bell Shakespeare’s Henry 5

Mar 21, 2025 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Cassie Tongue

It could have been nothing. Louis, Dauphin of France, sidesteps the codes and tradition of royal gifts and sends young King Henry an insult instead: tennis balls. It’s understandable that he’s scornful of the one-time Prince Hal, who kept questionable company, shirked responsibility and enjoyed a drink. Rather than acknowledge that his brand needs some work, however, King Henry treats those tennis balls as a royal threat. He declares instant war.