Year: 2009

  Photo: The Call – Josh McConville   A GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY Sydney Premiere: THE CALL by Patricia Cornelius at the SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney. THE CALL by Patricia Cornelius, first produced by the Melbourne Workers Theatre and FULL TILT at the Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne in late 2007, concerns principally the story of four young people, uninspired by their education who are “disgorged” into a series of jobs in their local community, that are available and maybe, for some, soul destroying: in a battery hen farm (chicken pluckers); an mdf board factory; a meat rendering plant. In…

Picture: Sasha Rozhdestvensky Sydney Symphony; 2009 Season, Great Classics. RUSSIAN TRIBUTE. At the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Music is not my field of expertise, however it is part of my theatre going diary. Hence… This program called RUSSIAN TRIBUTE has the Violin Concerto No 1 in A minor, Op.99 by Dmitri Shostakovich (my favourite composer {at this time}) followed by Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky, orchestrated by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The violin soloist is Russian: Sasha Rozhdestvensky and the conductor is Russian: Vladimir Ashkenazy. Russians playing and interpreting Russian. Blissful expectations. And so it was. I bought my…

  De Quincey Co present GHOST QUARTERS – THE FIRST DREAM OF THE OPIUM CONFESSIONS at Track 12, CARRIAGEWORKS. On Friday night venturing into the Carriageworks enclave was a very daunting but thriving experience. The huge foyer of the Carriage works was abuzz with an indoor evening market. On top of that, all the possible performing spaces were in use, including the foyer: a series of local “popular music” performers. It was both disconcerting to have to deal with the excited crowds and yet happifying to be in the Carriageworks space so alive. Wending one’s way, to be on time,…

  HARLOS PRODUCTIONS present HAMLET at the Bondi Pavilion. HAMLET directed by David Ritchie for Harlos Productions has a small company of 8 actors playing, in a well edited text, a number of responsibilities. There are two scheduled actors to play Hamlet; Angela Bauer and Damien Ryan. This is a very lucid and slow unwinding of the text. It’s energy is gently expositional and ideal for students studying the play. I attended a performance of Damien Ryan as Hamlet. The performance is intelligent and clear. Re-assuring. There is great personable charm but it is a little too “held”, controlled, and…

This play is, according to Mr Miller in his many interviews, the most performed of his plays. Published and first performed in 1953, during the height of the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), set in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, it still burns with relevance in 2009. When the Deputy-Governor, Danforth in the third act of the play speaking to one of his examinees, Francis Nurse, (in this production, Giles Corey, played by Peter Carroll) says, “But you must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road…

Theatre Trailer by Preview Play Siren Theatre Co and MAKEbeLIVE productions present….. RICHARD III by William Shakespeare. Walking down towards us, his captive audience, both Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Thomas Campbell, one and the same person, comes to a halt in a spotlight, contemplates us and then begins “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York…” We listen and watch with anticipatory excitement and foreknowledge (most of us, of this play, this night) and accept the invitation to watch a most sensational story of treachery, and evil personified, unravel for our delight. We…