Month: March 2010

Company B Belvoir, Griffin Theatre Company and ThinIce present LOVE ME TENDER by Tom Holloway at Belvoir St Theatre, Upstairs. Tom Holloway has had DON’T SAY THE WORDS; BEYOND THE NECK and now LOVE ME TENDER produced in Sydney, in the last three years, and has successively demonstrated, and with this play confirmed his potential as a very important contemporary voice in the Australian theatre scene. All three plays deal with confronting issues and in a literary style that is poetic and beautiful. Challenging and satisfying. Both substance and style. A voice that is growing more and more unique in…

Two Birds One Stone and Griffin Independent present S-27 by Sarah Grochala at the SBW Stables Theatre. “S-27 won the inaugural Amnesty International Protect The Human Playwriting Award and was first produced at London’s Fin borough Theatre in June 2009.” Sarah Grochala “draws on prison records and interviews with the handful of survivors of Cambodia’s infamous Toul Sleng prison” run by the Khmer Rouge. 1.5 million of that country’s citizens between 1975 and 1979 were murdered. Hem En, the staff photographer at the Tool Slang prison, has had his story told in a documentary, THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN, nominated…

  ACO, Australian Chamber Orchestra presents Tour Two, ACO Soloists at City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney. Seven pieces of music. How generous the ACO is to its patrons. Two of the pieces are by Franz Schreker, Scherzo (Composed 1900) and Intermezzo for strings,Op.8 (Composed 1900). Described in the program as “The missing link between Strauss and Schoenberg”, Schreker was greatly esteemed in his time but is nearly forgotten now. New rehabilitation of this composer, lost in the madness of the German Nazi period, has been in action, spearheaded by the Franz Schreker Foundation. These small works “display a sort…

Sydney Theatre Company in association with Frantic Assembly present STOCKHOLM by Bryony Lavery at Wharf 1. This is a co-production between the Sydney Theatre Company and an English company, Frantic Assembly. Frantic Assembly is a company that creates and explores physical theatre skills as part of the dramatic language of their productions. Steven Hoggett, one of the co-directors – choreographers of STOCKHOLM (the other being Scott Graham), was associate director of the National Theatre of Scotland’s BLACK WATCH, which was part of the 2008 Sydney Festival. (Best remembered for an inventive physical transformation sequence.) STOCKHOLM was developed in close collaboration…

  Ion Nibiru presents Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me by Frank McGuinness at The Pact Theatre. “Ion Nibiru is a new production company dedicated to breaking the mould and offering fresh perspectives in creative enterprises. Co-founded by Rod Byrnes and Ray Sullivan…. along with Zac Jardine and a working relationship with Production Company Darqhorse (headed by John Ma)”. They state later in their program notes, “It is not a different direction; rather, an alternate perspective.” Frank McGuinness is an Irish playwright whose most recent work, GRETA GARBO COMES TO DONNEGAL, has just opened in London (January). Besides his own plays…

  Sydney Theatre Company Education presents THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE by Martin McDonagh at Wharf 2. THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE by Martin McDonagh is on the school syllabus and so the Education wing of the Sydney Theatre Company have mounted a production to take the play from the page to the stage, to give some students the brilliant opportunity to see the text as intended: Full of the life of actors telling the story to them in a space where they are part of the creative exchange that is the magic of the theatre. Actor and audience together,…