Year: 2011

  SYDNEY CHAMBER OPERA presents THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN by Leos Janacek in Bat 20 at Carriageworks. Earlier in the year, Sydney Chamber Opera work launched itself with the production of a new work, NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, based on a short work by Dostoevsky. It was a remarkable debut. Tackling Janacek’s THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN is a brave choice as the work is relatively well known from its many outings in the Opera Australia repertoire. The work has a large cast, including a vitally important children’s chorus. Premiered the 6th November, 1924 at the National Theatre, Brno, this opera story…

  Australian Theatre for Young People presents “cursed hearts” inspired by ROMEO AND JULIET of Shakespeare, Gounod and Prokofiev at the atyp theatre space at the Wharf. Danielle O’Keefe, the director, has attempted to investigate with a young troupe of 21 actors, the thematics of Shakespeare’s ROMEO AND JULIET, specifically, the forbidden love between warring parties, families. Of the 15 women and 6 men, from my reading of the ensemble biographies in the program, most appear to be still at school. “The aim was to tell the well-known story of ROMEO and JULIET in a new way through the layering…

  Country Arts WA and Deckchair Theatre in association with Seymour Centre present KRAKOUER! By Reg Cribb, in collaboration with Sean Gorman, author of Brother Boys, in the Seymour Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney. Reg Cribb has fondly adapted and collaborated with Sean Gorman and the Krakouer families to construct a straight forward narrative playwork celebrating the football skills and tempestuous lives of two ground-breaking indigenous sportsman, figures, in the Australian history landscape. Marcelle Schmitz, the director, has efficiently employed the actors with an ease of storytelling techniques that are fluid and always fresh and comprehensible, despite the multi-role play in…

  Michaela Kalowski and Owl Farm in partnership with Darlinghurst Theatre Company Present DRAKE THE AMAZING and LA DISPUTE at the Darlinghurst Theatre(Supported by Arts Radar). The program and publicity informs us that DRAKE THE AMAZING and LA DISPUTE by Andy Hyman are two plays: a double-bill. “Two sharp comedies exploring love, lust and transformation.” What we have, experientially, are 12 actors giving very good and enlivened performances directed very well, with a sense of meticulous detail by the director John Kachoyan. What we don’t have are two very interesting plays. LA DISPUTE , which I recognised as an adaptation…

THE ARTS CENTRE PRESENTS AN AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE: NEDERLANDS DANS THEATRE 1 at the Arts Centre Melbourne. THE NEDERLANDS DANCE THEATRE 1 – I knew of this famous international dance company, maybe I have seen them in earlier tours in Sydney, certainly I know some of the work of one of the company’s previous Artistic Directors “the visionary choreographer, Jiri Kylian”. The wondrous, totally absorbing BELLA FIGURA performed by The Australian Ballet a few seasons ago, being one of them. How lucky I was then, that I was in Melbourne last week, and was able to catch this company at work.…

  CROW CROW PRODUCTIONS and ELIZA OCANA in Association with TAMARAMA ROCK SURFERS presents the Premiere production of K.I.J.E. by Joanna Erskine. This new Australian work, a short one act play by Joanna Erskine, takes its inspiration, from the novella of Yuri Tynyanov, about the invented Lieutenant KIJE, made famous by the Prokofiev chamber music suite (another Russian influence to the Sydney theatre menu, this year!). In a contemporary setting Konrad (Fayassal Bazzi), Irving (Tj Power), Jono (Gabriel Fancourt) and Ed (Wade Briggs) four young ‘soldiers’ as a result of boredom create graffiti on a wall: “K.I. j.E.”, which under…