Year: 2010

    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…

Sydney Theatre Company and Australian Theatre for Young People (atyp) present TUSK TUSK by Polly Stenham at Wharf 1. TUSK TUSK (2009) is the second play by Polly Stenham and like her first, THAT FACE, was presented at the Royal Court Theatre. THAT FACE, was presented earlier in the year at Belvoir St. Theatre. The writing in TUSK TUSK is not as strong or as interesting. In fact it is mostly a re-working of the preoccupations of the first play. The story of a family, in this case, three young children, instead of two, coping with an unstable mother, and…

    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…