Month: February 2009

  TRIPTYCH THEATRE presents the Australian Premiere of THE MUSICAL OF MUSICALS:THE MUSICAL! at the Parade Studio at the Parade Theatres, NIDA.   When I was a school boy and then a University student, I would read of performances at the old Menzies Hotel of “potted” musicals. When I try to remember the stars who presented them, Nancye Hayes, Hayes Gordon, Jill Perryman and was it possible, June Bronhill(?) seem to pop up. Others I’m sure will come to me. I never went, sadly for reasons of finance and callow youth….. but I remember lingering over the possibility of going.…

SYDNEY SYMPHONY 2009 Season. ENERGY AUSTRALIA MASTER SERIES: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. Overture and incidental music for Shakespeare’s play by Felix Mendelssohn. Text abridged by Tim Carroll.   This concert is a celebration of “the opening of the concert season for 2009… the beginning of the formal relationship between Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Symphony” and the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, two hundred years ago, in 1809.   In the Introductory notes to the performance we are told “the program we’ve devised for tonight speaks to the power of music – not just its power to move our emotions and stimulate…

GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY present RANTERS THEATRE production of HOLIDAY by Raimondo Cortese at THE SBW STABLES THEATRE.   When we climb up to the performance space at the SBW Stables you find that the whole of the interior has been painted white. (Set design: Anna Trelogan) Stage floor and walls, auditorium walls and even the further steps into the seating banks. The whiteness is quite a visual shock. Instead of the usual masking black paint there is the nakedness of the white that emphasises all the ugly blemishes of every surface. The production has been showing for several weeks, when…

Sydney Theatre Company and Bell Shakespeare present VENUS & ADONIS by William Shakespeare. A Bell Shakespeare and Malthouse Melbourne co-production developed through Mind’s Eye.   From Ted Hughes’ Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being: “By the time (Shakespeare) emerged into history… he had written the Henry VI trilogy, Titus Andronicus and two or three successful comedies. His foothold on the stage, as can be seen in hindsight was firm. But he must have been aware that at any moment the stage itself could founder… In the Autumn of 1592, when an unusually severe outbreak of plague had closed all…

PERFORMANCE SPACE present MONUMENTAL, ROS WARBY at Carriageworks. “MONUMENTAL is Roz Warby’s critically acclaimed solo dance work, developed in collaboration with her long standing artistic team, designer Margie Medlin and composer Helen Mountford. It premiered at the Melbourne International Arts Festival in October 2006 and received the Age Critics Commendation Award, Greenroom Awards for Best Female Dancer and Best Composition, and the Robert Helpmann Award for Best Female Dancer in a Ballet or Dance Work.” On a screen are projected pre-existing vintage film images of bird life intermixed with motion graphics of the dancer herself. Accompanied by a beautifully apt…

The Sydney Gay and Lesbian MARDI GRAS 2009 logo stands beside the FOCUS THEATRE logo at the top of the program. BE WARNED then, that, these two plays, as performance pieces, have a very specific audience target in mind. Both plays are examples of extreme verbal voyeurism. Both plays have what seems to be a recent Hallmark of Focus Theatre performances, a de rigueur requirement of including “male striptease” and full frontal nakedness, a titillating element of soft porn. (Witness BLOWING WHISTLES and it’s soft porn memories.) I guess if Channel 9 can score audience targets with similar tactics in…