Month: August 2010

    Raw Hide, Eliza Ocana and the atyp’s Under the Wharf Program presents ALASKA by D.C. Moore . ALASKA is a first play by English writer, D.C. Moore. It concerns a young group of people finding their way in the contemporary world, either as drop outs from university or in preparation for university. They are working at a job to pay the rent and buy the food: The front of house staff at the local cinema complex. The jobs are not taxing and fairly menial. Not much to aspire too, despite the ‘corporate’ trappings to help give the employees…

    Sydney Theatre Company and The Sydney Morning Herald present AUGUST:OSAGE COUNTY by Tracy Letts at the Sydney Theatre. “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” thus begins Leo Tolstoy’s ANNA KARENINA, and he ought to have known! AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY has us meet the Weston family in a large rambling country house outside Pawhusta, Oklahoma, sixty miles north-west of Tulsa, and boy, are they unhappy! Over three and a half hours we watch the unique unhappiness of this family unravel in front of us. It sure is a roller coaster…

    Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the present a Benefit Concert at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall: EUROPEAN TOUR FAREWELL CONCERT. The Sydney Symphony, as I write this, are on their way to a two week, eight city, nine concert tour of Europe. Five and a half tons of musical luggage, sixty-five flight cases (on Emirates) to be in Italy for a performance at the Stresa Festival on Sunday (29th August). Last night there was a Benefit Concert for the orchestra. Three big pieces of music conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. The first work was an Australian score by Peter…

    Arts Radar in association with B Sharp presents WOYZECK, written by Georg Buchner, translated by Carl Richard Mueller. At the Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir St. WOYZECK by Georg Buchner (1836-37) has a reputation of some standing and is more often than not, met, as a regularly performed piece in most university theatre societies. How much of this standing is academic appreciation, with hindsight, and how much of it is in the witnessing of it as engaging performance is my problem with the piece. I have never had an experience with this text that has been engrossing or given me…

    William Zappa in partnership with Darlinghurst Theatre Co. present WINTER’S DISCONTENT written and performed by William Zappa at the Darlinghurst Theatre. One of the influential books, among many, on my view of the actor is a 1987 publication called THE WAY OF THE ACTOR, subtitled “The Path to Knowledge & Power” by Brian Bates (Shambhala). Brian Bates is a psychologist who spent seven years researching the psychology of acting with students of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He went on to be a Director of the Medical Psychology Project at the Department of Psychology, University…

    Opera Australia presents La Sonnambula (The Sleepwalker). Opera in two acts by Vincent Bellini. Libretto by Felice Romani, after Scribe’s scenario for Jean-Pierre Aumer’s ballet La Somnambule, ou L’arrivee d’un nouveau seigneur (1827) This is my second opera of Vincenzo Bellini. The first was I Capueleti e I Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montague’s), presented by Opera Australia last year and in the chronological journey of the composer’s output, La Sonnambula is the direct follow up. First performed on the 6th March, 1831 at the Teatro Carcano, Milan. The story is based on a ballet by Scribe and…