Month: July 2009

  Ensemble Theatre present THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED by Douglas Carter Beane at the Ensemble Theatre. This is the second play by Douglas Carter Beane we have seen in Sydney this year. AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN was presented at the Darlinghurst Theatre as part of the background to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festivities in February. The principal characters in this play are also entangled with the plight of being homosexual and in the world, or edge of it, as a celebrity, and the difficulties that that fact may make for the individuals. The characters here include…

    Company B present THE PROMISE. Original play by Alexi Arbuzov. New Version by Nick Dear. Based on the translation by Ariadne Nicolaeff. At the Belvoir Theatre. THE PROMISE by Alexi Arbuzov was first published in 1965 and had an English stage production in November, 1966 at the Oxford Playhouse transferring into London the following year. The cast was a stellar young company; Judi Dench, Ian McShane, Ian McKellen. Mr McKellen (as Leonidik) won Most Promising New Actor for the performance. “Ancient” history, but indicates one of the reasons to do this play. It covers some Russian History, beginning…

  Selby and Friends present TRIOZ – Ensemble in Residence: City Recital Hall Angel Place Sydney. Tour Three PATHOS AND PLEASURE. I attended my first concert by the TRIOZE Ensemble. It is made up of Kathy Selby, Piano; Niki Vasilakis, Violin; Emma-Jane Murphy, Cello. As I have mentioned before I merely diarise my experience as this is not my field of expertise. I went to the concert because of the programming, Arvo Part and Kats-Chernin being points of fascination and admiration for me. On the night I attended the order of the material began with Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin’s piece;…

  Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company & Qantas by arrangement with Poor Boy Enterprises Pty Ltd & Llegup Pty Ltd present POOR BOY – A Play With Songs by Matt Cameron and Tim Finn at the Sydney Theatre. The most astounding thing about POOR BOY is that the Artistic Directors of both the Melbourne Theatre Company (Simon Phillips) and the Sydney Theatre Company (Andrew Upton and Cate Blanchett) believed that this play represents the best in new Australian writing and that it deserved a major production. The fact that the January, 2009 production in Melbourne received very wan reviews…

  Darlinghurst Theatre Company & Drowned 8 Productions present THE JUNGLE by Louis Nowra. Louis Nowra wrote this play and it premiered at The Sydney Theatre Company in 1995. In the program notes to this production Mr Nowra talks of this piece as an “intimate epic” and of “using a small cast to play many characters over a large spectrum of society.” 9 actors play some 29 characters over a sprawling three and a half hours in some sixteen scenes. In THE JUNGLE there are quite a collection of characters living in the Darlinghurst/Kings Cross area, “this is a world…

Photo – Marcus Graham – Pericles   Bell Shakespeare present PERICLES in Association with TAIKOZ. The Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. Norrie Epstein in his book THE FRIENDLY SHAKESPEARE in his discussion of the Tragicomic Romances begins: “Fantastical, superficial, artificial, improbable, impressionistic, inferior, miraculous, boring – or the best: no one can agree on the merits of Shakespeare’s romances. The eminently reasonable Dr. Johnson dismissed them as foolish, and they are. But, in the words of the playwright Dennis Potter, they are “sweetly foolish”. With PERICLES, CYMBELINE, THE WINTER’S TALE, and THE TEMPEST we enter Shakespeare’s final period………