Month: September 2010

Sydney Opera House presents a Saddler’s Wells production, SUTRA in the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. “Sutra sees one of Europe’s most exciting dancer-choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui unite with Turner prize-winner Antony Gormley, alongside 17 Buddhist monks from the original Shaolin Temple in China, in the first true collaboration between Western artists and the Shaolin Temple.” In a converted extended stage arrangement, masked behind ugly black curtain cloths in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House ( the arrangement does feel theatrically clumsy and not usefully aesthetic in preparing an audience for the event), a three sided grey cyclorama…

    White Blackboard in association with B Sharp present YELLOW MOON – The Ballad of Leila and Lee, by David Greig at Belvoir St Downstairs Theatre. David Greig is a prolific contemporary Scottish playwright. I have admired his writing for sometime: THE AMERICAN PILOT, DAMASCUS, and a recent work commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, DUNSINANE (Scotland, immediately after the Macbeths, is particularly interesting) and this is a gentle introduction to his work in action, my first. YELLOW MOON – The Ballad of Leila and Lee was commissioned by TAG (Theatre about Glasgow) Theatre Company and premiered in the…

    Flightpath & Radar in partnership with Darlinghurst Theatre Company present The DYSFUNCKSHONALZ by Mike Packer at the Darlinghurst Theatre. “Punk, anarchy and a mid-life crisis – the paradox of ageing rockers who still think they’ve got it. 30 years ago Billy Abortion’s band mates left him bleeding to death in a foreign hotel room …there are some things that are hard to forgive and forget. But when a credit card company (FREEDOM) offers big bucks to get the band back together to record their latest jingle (based around the DYSFUNCKSHONALS chorus from their only hit song PLASTIC PEOPLE!!!),…

    NaGL (Not a Good Look) written and directed by Lech Mackiewicz, creatively brought to you by mr.tomchuk and Auto Da Fe. Produced by IngJay Productions with support from Factory Space Theatre Company at the TAP Gallery. Here is another new Australian play. What marks this work as arresting and worth attending is the cultural prism that the writer and director, Lech Mackiewicz, “a Polish artist immigrant”, brings to this exercise of his view of living in Australia in 2010. At least I found it so – a provocative experience to take on board on several different levels: Content…

    Flinders Quartet present BELOVED BEETHOVEN at the Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium. The Flinders Quartet from Melbourne consist of Erica Kennedy (violin), Matthew Tomkins ( violin), Helen Ireland (viola), Zoe Knighton (cello). The program, BELOVED BEETHOVEN, was an all Beethoven immersion. To open each half of the program, the Quartet had commissioned from Calvin Bowman two arrangements of movements from Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas. Piano sonata in A, op.2 no. 2:Largo appassionata and Piano sonata in G, op.79: Andante. Both works were charming and brief, excellently played. The last of the two particularly exquisite. Apparently there is precedent for this…

GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY presents the World Premier of QUACK by Ian Wilding at the SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney. QUACK. This is not quack as “to utter a cry of a duck or some similar sound” as I kept thinking before I saw the show, but rather, quack as in “an ignorant or fraudulent pretender to medical skill”- ahhhh! We have Doctor Littlewood (Chris Haywood) who has been practising the transplanting of animal glands into humans, “a very quintessence of remedies” to gain a sexual edge for the recipients. The town boss, local miner baron and entrepreneur and bully, Mr Gunner…