Month: August 2013

Ruichi Sanghi Dance Company presents DEVDAS , The Musical, adapted by Anu Shivram. Music and lyrics by Aparna Nagashayana. At the Parade Theatre, Kensington. DEVDAS, The Musical is based on a famous 1917 novella by Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay. The story has had many other incarnations, famously in a 2002 Hindi film, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, nominated by India as Best Foreign Film for the Academy Awards and also for a BAFTA Award, in that year. DEVDAS, The Musical tells “of a man and two women, one he never loved and one he never stopped loving”. Devdas as a child…

New Theatre presents JERUSALEM by Jez Butterworth at the New Theatre, Newtown. JERUSALEM by Jez Butterworth had its first production at the Royal Court Theatre in 2009, and then transferred to the West End, London, for a season in 2010. The play travelled to New York in 2011 and played an extended season there, before, once again, returning for a further season in the West End that, also, extended into 2012. The critical reception for the play has been overwhelmingly positive in both world theatre centres, London and New York (and simply laudatory for the actor Mark Rylance in the…

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is one of those famous plays by a now famous writer, Tom Stoppard, that every young, university actor wants to be in, or do a scene from. In the early nineteen sixties, having the idea that the King of England to whom Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in Shakespeare’s HAMLET, were dispatched, was probably King Lear, Tom Stoppard wrote, whilst working in West Berlin, with several other writers on a Ford Foundation Award (as “cultural window dressing” for the allies!) a one-act comedy in verse called tentatively, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN MEET KING LEAR. A seed had been…

True West Theatre and Riverside productions present RU4ME written and performed by Annie Byron. based on KISSING FROGS by Andee Jones in the Lennox Theatre, Riverside theatres, Parramatta. RU4ME is a delightful evening in the theatre with a winsomely seductive Connie (Annie Byron) who relates to us her ‘adventures’ in the sphere of ‘internet dating”. This senior lady, seeking a ‘partner’ to attend ‘art house movies’ and, perhaps, other things, under the guidance of her daughter, Rosie, begins a series of ventures that are amusing and cautionary. Ms Byron has adapted a book by Andee Jones, KISSING FROGS, and with…

Strange Duck productions and Liberman Partnership present FREUD’S LAST SESSION by Mark St Germain at The Theatre Royal, King St, Sydney. FREUD’S LAST SESSION is a long one act play for two characters, by Mark St Germain. Mr St Germain has developed a catalogue of plays creating historical fiction. This one concerns a fictional meeting between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis in Freud’s London study in 1939, on the evening that World War II was being declared. Mr St Germain took his inspiration from a book: “The Question of God” by Dr Armand M. Nicholi Jnr. A confirmed atheist confronting…

Dear Reader, This entry to my Theatre Diary is a personal message. I have over the past year or so, since extricating myself from NIDA, been working on a number of projects. One of my objectives has always been to empower the actor as an independent creative force, in an environment where we, the actor, were often (are) simply relegated to the bottom of the ‘tools’  necessary for product, as: ‘talent’. Even, within the political machinations of an institution, my objective was to empower the “acting student”- or, at least strive, attempt to. It was not always possible to do,…