Month: February 2013

I have not read PETER PAN in any of the manifestations, by J.B. Barrie, that Tommy Murphy, the present adaptor of this Belvoir production tells us learnedly about, in the program notes. I have not even seen the Walt Disney animated adaptation. I only know it from little snippets on the old Walt Disney show of my growing up, on Sunday nights at 6.30 on Channel 9, watching it in our fibro housing commission in North Ryde. I remember Peter in a costume like Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood, with hands akimbo on his hips, and Captain Hook with a hook…

  NEW THEATRE present MILKMILKLEMONADE by Joshua Conkel at the New Theatre, Newtown. MILKMILKLEMONADE a play by Joshua Conkel concerns, in essence, the coming-of-age of two young boys, Emory (Mark Dessaix) and Elliot (Kieran Foster) living in the boon-docks of somewhere in America, who are gay and are not sure what that is. The play is set on a chicken farm. It is run by Nanna (Peter Nettell) – impersonated here as a lady with all the visual ‘drag’ qualities of kitchy butch: flamboyantly grotesque trappings of wig, make up and costume, who has a certain pragmatic charm and direct…

  Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney Festival and Allens present THE SECRET RIVER by Kate Grenville. An adaptation for the stage by Andrew Bovell at the Sydney Theatre. It is interesting that the lead credits for this production gives the novelist of THE SECRET RIVER (2005), Kate Grenville, that honour – the lead, precedence, and that the work by Andrew Bovell as the adaptor, for this the stage-version of THE SECRET RIVER, is placed secondarily. This is not the usual practice and I read this as verification of the almost universal admiration/affection that this novel and its related works – there…

Photo by Greg Doyle Gaiety Theatre in association with Sydney Mardi Gras present TORCH SONG TRILOGY by Harvey Fierstein at Theatre 19 (The old Darlinghurst Theatre venue), by arrangement with ORiGiN Theatrical, on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. TORCH SONG TRILOGY, by Harvey Fierstein, began as a monologue that became a play called THE INTERNATIONAL STUD. There followed a second play: FUGUE IN A NURSERY and a third: WIDOWS AND CHILDREN FIRST! They then were produced as a collection/trilogy at the Richard Allen Center in October 1981 and then moved to Broadway in 1982 where it played 1,222 performances, winning…

  Australian Theatre for Young People presents The Voices Project 2013, OUT OF PLACE at the atyp Wharf Space Hickson Rd. Australian Theatre for Young People presents The Voices Project 2013, OUT OF PLACE by writers from atyp’s Fresh ink program directed by Paige Rattray. 10 young writers have written ten, seven-minute monologues and are performed by ten young actors, members of the atyp cohort. This exercise in joint creativity has been directed under the guidance of Ms Rattray. It is a highly polished production. Design by Lauren O’Flaherty, locating the work on an image of a building site, an…

  Ian McRae AO and Leo Schofield AO present The Paris Opera Ballet in GISELLE at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney. GISELLE presented by the Paris Opera Ballet at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney is as near a perfect Classic Dance experience as one could want. In 2007, Mr Ian McRae and Mr Leo Schofield brought to Australia this outstanding company and gave us Rudolf Nureyev’s SWAN LAKE and George Balanchine’s JEWELS. If you missed them then, and love the theatre, dance in this instance, do not let this opportunity pass you by. This is theatre on a rarefied plane of…