Year: 2011

    Belvoir presents THE DIARY OF A MADMAN by Nikolai Gogol adapted by David Holman with Neil Armfield & Geoffrey Rush in the Upstairs Theatre. My friends and I had organised ourselves and waited for five hours to hopefully get tickets to see this show. We were able to buy our tickets but not until ten minutes before curtain. We became increasingly anxious and excited as the clock ticked forward. Then we were called to the ticket office. It had been a very pleasant afternoon in the Belvoir foyer waiting and chatting to perfect strangers who were similarly patient…

Lickerty Split & Darlinghurst Theatre Company Present OPEN FOR INSPECTION: The Real Estate MUSICAL! Music and Lyrics by Lucy Egger. Script by Tim Bosanquet. At the Darlinghurst Theatre, Kings Cross. OPEN FOR INSPECTION is a new musical comedy. It is set “in the cut throat world of Sydney real estate, two ruthless, rival agencies (run by, Carl [Drew Fairley] and Joan [Sara Browne]) are battling for buyers during a property slump. They go to extreme lengths to literally make a killing…. It is about a real estate agent who becomes a Serial Killer… set to music”. The Script (book) is…

    Sydney Festival presents Eddie Perfect in MISANTHROPOLOGY- a World Première in The Famous Spiegeltent. “Eddie Perfect, Helpmann Award-winning comedian, composer and performer…brings his latest darkly satirical musical work to a new late-night time slot in the salubrious surrounds ( Sydney weather makes it mud, mud, muddier surrounds, don’t wear your good shoes!)of The Famous Spiegeltent. MISANTHROPOLOGY is Perfect’s first new solo show since DRINK PEPSI BITCH! and promises to be a kind of twisted social autopsy, examining the strange cultural rituals we find ourselves performing….” so says the Sydney Festival Guide notes. My first meeting with Mr Perfect…

Urged by others, here we go with a look back over my theatre going year in 2010. Re-iterating my belief in the importance of the writer as the centre of the theatre experience let’s begin with those productions of plays that impressed. In the Sydney theatre going experience it is interesting to me to see how the new Australian work is what dominated my pleasurable responses. In no particular order: THE BOOK OF EVERYTHING. Adapted by Richard Tulloch from the novel by Guus Kuljer. A wonderful production for both children and adults from Belvoir B Company and Theatre of Image.…

Ruminations: THE SEAGULL, UNCLE VANYA, THREE SISTERS and THE CHERRY ORCHARD, the four great plays of Anton Chekhov. THREE SISTERS is my favourite and the greatest in my estimation. UNCLE VANYA is the smaller gem and my next favoured. Both great, mostly, differing only, in the scale of their scenarios. What makes the works of Chekhov a favourite exploration for actors and audiences (especially, if you have the opportunity to see the works regularly, as in Europe, where they are a staple of the theatre ‘diet’) is the endless possibility of interpretation. The fine ambiguity of the Chekhovian text (I…