Month: July 2012

  Opera Australia presents Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) : An Opera in three acts by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Libretto by Paul Schott (pseudonym for Julius and Erich Korngold), after Georges Rodenbach’s novel BRUGES – LA – MORTE (1982). Sung in German with English surtitles, translated by Jonathan Burton. In the Opera theatre, Sydney Opera House. I believe Opera to be the greatest of the performing art forms. I also know that it is the hardest of all the forms to get right to justify such an observation. I have had GREAT experiences. A Meistersinger; aTristan; a Parsifal; a…

  A Critical Stages and The Follies Production of SYNCOPATION by Allan Knee at The Concourse Theatre, Chatswood. SYNCOPATION by Allan Knee, an American text, opened on Tuesday night at the new Concourse Theatre in Chatswood (great space). It was this production’s 41st venue on a long and extensive tour over the last five months. It moves on to Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Wollongong, next week and finishes (I think) out at the Riverside Theatre complex at Parramatta the week after. I reckon it is worth making an effort to see. SYNCOPATION is a two-hander, two act play. It is…

Keith Bain, photo by Stuart Campbell Keith Bain passed on on Wednesday, 4th of July, 2012. Keith Bain was modest and quietly, hugely influential in the formation of the Australian traditions in the performing arts. Keith, not alone, a much loved National Treasure that only those in the know knew how great he was. Keith Bain the Australian Artists’ role model – without whom, many of us would have been a very different, and probably lesser human being. I can , definitely, say that about myself. I think I first met Keith Bain at Doris Fitton’s classes for actors at…

  G.Bod Theatre in association with NIDA Parade Theatres presents SHALLOW SLUMBER by Chris Lee in the NIDA Parade Studio. SHALLOW SLUMBER is a small two-hander by Irish playwright (lives in London), Chris Lee. It concerns the relationship between a Social Worker, Moira (Rebecca Johnston) and a mother, Dawn (Catherine Terracini). Mr Lee, himself a social worker, has written over 30 plays and sees theatre as a source for social change. SHALLOW SLUMBER was written in response to a case of a child death and the subsequent press reaction to the role of the social worker. Mr Lee set out…

Photo by Heidrun Lohr Belvoir presents OLD MAN by Matthew Whittet in the Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. OLD MAN by Matthew Whittet is a play in two parts (approximately 75 minutes long) that examines the relationship between a man and his father, and the same man and his own family. Part One begins with a monologue (not again! See MALICE TOWARDS NONE, I LOVE YOU, BRO and PORN.CAKE), one of several, given with a simple honesty by a father, Daniel (Leon Ford) recounting an ordinary morning that leads to a horrible revelation that his family has gone. Interspersed…

Photo by Leila Kaawi Hobo Collective in association with Tamarama Rock Surfers presents THE HIGHWAY CROSSING by Jaan Tätte, translated by Hendrick Elstein, at the Bondi Pavilion Theatre. Two romantically committed young people, Roland (Hendrik Elstein) and Laura (Aimee Horne) hitch-hiking to a birthday celebration are stranded at a highway crossing, and as night and the cold settles in, look for refuge, down the track, at a house where they encounter Oswald (Iain Sinclair), a man used to being alone, who in the course of this night changes their lives. Oswald offers the young man “one billion dollars” for him to…