Year: 2013

SUMMERFOLK (Sommergaste) by Maxim Gorky presented at the Schaubhne am lehniner Platz, Berlin. THE RISE AND FALL OF MAHAGONNY (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) – an Opera with orchestra in two Acts by Kurt Weill. Text by Bertolt Brecht, at the Komische Opera, Berlin. This is a very late blog. Dear Diary. I travelled to Berlin for the very first time, over a year ago, on my way to a Christmas In Sweden – a farm near Gothenburg – it snowed, yay! Whilst in Berlin, beside the art immersion, not only of the Ishtar Gate variety – staggering –…

Complicite and Simon McBurney present THE MASTER AND MARGARITA adapted from the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov by Simon McBurney, the Company and Edward Kemp,  at the Barbican Theatre, London. The Complicite theatre company led by Simon McBurney has toured to Australia many times. The last time was with A DISAPPEARING NUMBER seen at the Sydney Theatre. It was a thrilling experience. I saw it twice. One day following another. Amazing. Technically innovative and story wise transporting and wonderfully moving. Finding that this company’s adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s THE MASTER AND MARGARITA had returned to London for a repeat season at the…

Michael Grandage Company presents PRIVATES ON PARADE – a play by Peter Nichols. Music by Denis King at the Noel Coward Theatre, London. Peter Nichols was born in 1927 and is still writing for the theatre. His first play in 1967 was the devastating comic tragedy A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG, presenting a young couple dealing with their disabled daughter, affectionately nicknamed, Joe Egg – the auto-biographical details from the writer’s life brilliantly, shockingly resonant still today. It is an audacious and relevant work, as pertinent today as it was then, as daring in form today as…

Sonia Friedman Productions in association with Shakespeare Road productions, 1001 Nights, Bob Bartner and Norman Tulchin, Rupert Gavin, Adam Blanshay present Shakespeare’s Globe’s productions of TWELFE NIGHT (OR, WHAT YOU WILL) and The Tragedie of KING RICHARD THE THIRD at the Apollo Theatre, the West End, London. I saw both these productions earlier in the year in London. On this recent weekend (last one in December, 2013) I read of several productions that are currently packing them in, in the London theatres. Actors, who happen to be also film and television stars and are drawing not only ‘bums onto seats’…

Ken Unsworth Studio presents the Australian Quartet. I was invited to the Ken Unsworth Studio in Belmont St in Alexandria to attend the launching of a new configuration of the Australia Quartet. Belmont! Alexandria! With an applied imagination: two romantic titles, I think. And at the Ken Unsworth studio, he has created an intimate little performance space, and as I listened to this concert, caused me to reflect, to remember the soiree scenes in films like Visconti’s L’INNOCENTE and THE LEOPARD. If we were all dressed differently I could have believed I was in such a private space and listening…

Unpathed Theatre Company presents THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW by John Patrick Shanley at the Tap Gallery. In the hurly burly of Christmas and end of year ‘madness’, some work in the theatre gets overlooked. This, now closed, production of an early John Patrick Shanley play, THE DREAMER EXAMINES HIS PILLOW (1985), at the Tap Gallery produced by a new Independent Company, Unpathed Theatre Company, is such a one. Most of us could pinpoint other Shanley works: DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA (1983) – a favourite of young actors into emotional angsty, violent relationships, and, so, of course, often…