Year: 2009

  Glass Umbrella Creative with Tamarama Rock Surfers in association with Samuel French inc NY present CHERRY SMOKE by James McManus at the Old Fitzroy Theatre. CHERRY SMOKE written by a relatively new American writer, James McManus, is a play set in a closed down steel works town near Pittsburg, about four neglected and abused young people. It is despondent and tough and finishes in scarifying tragedy with a tiny glimmer of hope. These are characters that from both our theatre and film and television going, we have met many times before, the story is horribly familiar. So, although the…

  Crowne Plaza COOGEE ARTS FESTIVAL, Feb 09 present THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS by Carlo Goldoni at Grant Reserve Amphitheater, Beach St Coogee. Sydney Festival finishes and a week later Coogee Arts Festival begins a month long festival of arts for the Randwick Coucil Area. This is the sixth Festival, which began in 2004. Festival Director Barry Watterson is responsible for championing the event and has expanded gently the activities. This years is the biggest arts offering. Check it out. (www.coogeeartsfestival.com.au) The festival began in 2004 with a performance of Shakespeare’s TWELFTH NIGHT. This year Mr Watterson has curated…

  Sydney Theatre Company and The Sydney Morning Herald present THE REMOVALISTS by David Williamson at The Wharf Theatre. I remember the cultural frisson of the early 1970’s in Sydney. The whole social and political culture was bubbling with the positive possibility of change. Emblematically for me was the burgeoning Australian Theatre and television. For instance, Channel 10 had produced a soapie called NUMBER 96 and I was seeing my life reflected in lots of ways in the stories that the entertainment world was making available. Change was imminent in every way and in everyplace. John Bell, Ken Horler and…

  Darlinghurst Theatre Company & Blue-in De Face Productions Present AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN by Douglas Carter Beane, at the Darlinghurst Theatre. The first act of this American play introduces us to Evan Wyler who has just had his first novel published and in one of the trendy magazines has had a commercially salacious photographic portrait, and presumably article, declaring him the latest “HOT” writer to watch: for a possible dazzling future!! We next meet an audaciously named whirlwind of a promoter, Alexa Vere de Vere, who commissions Evan to write a “treatment” of her life for the Hollywood…

Lipsynch – Sydney Festival 2009 – Photo by Prudence Upton SYDNEY FESTIVAL presents LIPSYNCH, an Ex Machina / Theatre Sans Frontieres production in association with Cultural Industry Ltd and Northern Stage, at the Theatre Royal. LYPSYNCH was an eight and a half hour performance directed by Robert Lepage. Time passed with surprising ease. It was never difficult to participate in. This work began life a year or so ago. First appearing in Newcastle, England, in February 2007. Subsequently it has appeared elsewhere around the world and has a future set of dates to come. Robert Lepage explains that the process…

  Brian Friel – Photo by Bobbie Hanvey GATE THEATRE DUBLIN and the SYDNEY FESTIVAL present Afterplay and The Yalta Game by Brian Friel at the Parade Theatre. AFTERPLAY and THE YALTA GAME are both short “entree” one act pieces.(Interestingly, they are usually presented together, sometimes with The Bear, as a full night’s entertainment, whereas the Festival has presented these works as separate pieces.Two Admission costs.) Both the plays are little “gems” of entertainment but are hardly a substantial experience singularly. With AFTERPLAY, Mr Friel has taken the indulgence of re-imagining two of Chekhov’s characters from two different plays, Sonya…