Year: 2011

  DARLINGHURST THEATRE COMPANY presents A PERTH THEATRE COMPANY AND WEEPING SPOON PRODUCTION – THE ADVENTURES OF ALVIN SPUTNIK: DEEP SEA EXPLORER by Tim Watts at the Darlinghurst Theatre. Tim Watts is the star of this show. He is a star. He is totally, totally winning and his show is totally, totally charming. He is the performer, deviser, director, producer, puppeteer and animator of this show and he pulls all these tasks off totally, totally wonderfully. I can only urge you to go. Using computer graphics and moving images and wonderful puppet creations, funny voices, a reasonably played ukulele and…

  A Critical Stages & Tamarama Rock Surfers Theatre Company production CAPTURE THE FLAG by Toby Schmitz at Riversides Theatre, Parramatta. This is one of several plays by Toby Schmitz. Yes, the actor. A man of many gifted talents. CAPTURE THE FLAG is a re-mounting of the production seen at the Old Fitzroy Theatre a couple of years ago. The handsome design elements: Set design by Genevieve Dugard and Leland Kean; Costume design by Lisa Walpole; Lighting design by Luiz Pampolha (restricted by the need of a lengthy tour, I’m sure); and the Sound design by Jeremy Silver, are all…

BAAL by Bertolt Brecht. Translated by Simon Stone and Tom Wright. A co–production of Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Melbourne at the Wharf 1 Theatre. If one cares to check out the Alison Croggon’S THEATRE NOTES blog, you’ll notice an amazing 107 comments following her review of BAAL at the Malthouse Theatre (it even drew James Waites into the fray – and he hadn’t even seen it, as of that time!) It was (is) an interesting commotion to follow, and it certainly whetted my appetite to see the work, although, with all the pre-show publicity etc. , it appeared that…

  AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA present Tour Three GLITTERING FROST at City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney. More music. This time a concert given by the Australian Chamber Orchestra featuring Martin Frost, a clarinettist. I write this simply as an amateur to music practice (see post: Mahler 9; Another World). This is a concert that I really encourage all theatre goers to see – for although it is a Music event, the theatre of Mr Frost, as an inspired artist, is as exciting to see as it is to hear the music. You get it all in one wonderfully inspired “package”.…

Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents MAHLER 9: ANOTHER WORLD in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House. After a heavy diet of good but depressing nihilistic theatre experiences of late (MUCH ADO… at Bell Shakespeare being the exception) and to help me to gain courage to attend BAAL at the Sydney Theatre Company, I decided “If music be the food of love”, what better way to drink in a whole fountain of love, then to go to hear the Sydney Symphony under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy to a Mahler drowning in sound/music/ love. I love music but am simply…

  Performance Space presents FATHOM by Dean Walsh in Bay 20 at Carriageworks. Performance Space presents FATHOM devised, choreographed and performed by Dean Walsh, the current Australia Council Dance Fellow for 2011-2012, as part of “UNEASY FUTURES, a season of visual and performing arts that contemplates visions of the future and moving towards the unknown.” Mr Walsh in a moving program note tells us of his distress at the loss of the natural habitat of his childhood, Mt Druitt in Sydney’s outer west. He contemplates the bigger sadness of the bigger world problem. “After about five years of tuning into…