Month: April 2008

      The Sydney Theatre Company presents the STC ACTORS COMPANY in THE SERPENT’S TEETH, two plays by Daniel Keene CITIZENS & SOLDIERS at The Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House on 24th April 2008.I mention this date so precisely because something rare was happening, for the first time in a long time in the theatre in Sydney I felt that the relevancy of the plays were immediate and concerned my life vitally. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Headline for the day was ‘The going just got tougher. ”It concerned “families on modest incomes” needing to be shielded from…

A new play commissioned by Company B from Brendan Cowell after he won THE PHILIP PARSONS YOUNG PLAYWRIGHT’S AWARD in 2005 called RUBEN GUTHRIE, playing in the B Sharp Space Downstairs, is blessed. It is blessed with a clear unfussy staging by the director Wayne Blair; by the wonderful look through the work of Jacob Nash (Set and Costume) and the Lighting by Luiz Pampolha (the third design mentioned in this series of notices); and most fortunately by the terrific performance of Toby Schmitz. Here is a performance of such miraculous ease: intelligence, dexterously skillful voice and body work. His…

The Griffin Theatre Company presented a revival production of Michael Gow’s THE KID at the Stables Theatre. It is 25 years since the original outing. I remember the play of three young underprivileged teenagers coming to the city to claim compensation from the Department and their adventures, meetings and disasters being confronting and moving. Gow had originally sewn in Wagner’s Ring as a hook during the scene breaks that gave the piece pathos and a grounding. It is interesting to see the play now, post 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Gaza, Hurricane Katrina and the gentle threat of catastrophic Climate Change and…

At the Darlinghurst Theatre – a co-op space – I saw a new Australian play, The World Premiere of MEN, LOVE AND THE MONKEYBOY by Caleb Lewis. The Ape and Homo Sapiens shares 97% of the same DNA. The play tells us this early on. We then see the other 3% acted out, mostly men and women behaving badly. The Direction (Christopher Hurrell) is not good or when I saw it, late in the season, the actors had lost discipline. The Design is not very useful and the staging is adequate. The Acting style is pitched somewhere between Television Situation…

Opening in Melbourne in late February, Tom Stoppard’s ROCK AND ROLL, opened at the Sydney Theatre April 14th. It is sad to realise that this is the first new play by Stoppard that Australian audiences have seen since ARCADIA some 13 or 15 years ago. This is what? The result of the Impoverishment of the Arts in Australia? Impoverishment of Financial Support or Intellectual Thought ,or Artistic Vision? I hope it was the first. We recently had Mr Stoppard in Sydney to give a talk. It was a full house with an eager audience. How embarrassing that we have not…

Company B’s presentation of ANTIGONE, a version of Sophocles’ play by Seamus Heaney, is a beautiful version which Heaney alternatively called THE BURIAL AT THEBES. Here at least is a young director that cares about the text and seems to respect what actors do. Alas, Chris Kohn, the director, along with his designer Dale Ferguson have made an error by setting this play in a rundown Community Hall on some undernourished housing estate. He immediately reduces the power of the piece. They dress the actors in down market costume, not clothing, so from the given visual circumstances I can’t match…