Year: 2015

Photo by Regis Lansac Ken Unsworth in collaboration with Australian Dance Artists presents, DEPARTURES, with the original music of Jonathan Cooper, at 137 Belmont St. Alexandria. October 1-4, October 14-17. DEPARTURES, at the workshop of the Australian sculptor, Ken Unsworth, is the fourth association/collaboration by that artist, and the Australian Dance Artists: Susan Barling, Anca Frankenhaeuser, Patrick Harding-Irmer and Ross Philip. Conceived by Mr Unsworth, some large sculptural pieces, conceived for the dancers to utilise and invent about and upon, plus other exquisite hand properties have been ‘manufactured’, for choreographic impact, all supported by an original score by Jonathan Cooper…

Photography by Marnya Rothe The Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove present, EDWARD II written by Christopher Marlowe, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre. Christopher (Kit) Marlowe born in 1564, died in 1593. Queen Elizabeth I herself was said to have pronounced Christopher Marlowe’s death sentence (‘prosecute it to the full’) at court. He died from a puncture wound above the eye at the house of a widow in Deptford. The Queen’s Coroner attributed the killing to a quarrel over ‘the reckoning’, a bill for food and drink, but many have long suspected that the murder had other…

Pacific Opera, in association with the Sydney Youth Orchestra, presents THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN, by Leos Janacek, in New Hall, at Sydney Grammar School. 2, 3 October. THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN, by Leos Janacek, was his last work and premiered in 1924. Opera Australia (or the Australian Opera) have presented it, several times. In this instance, Pacific Opera have secured the sure hands and experienced skills of conductor Alexander Briger to guide and bring it to coherent life, which is no small feat. Says Michael Campbell in his Director’s notes: … One aspect of [the complexity of this work] is…

Photo by Phyllis Wong Don’t Look Away and Blancmange Productions present, A PROPERTY OF THE CLAN, by Nick Enright, at the Blood Moon Theatre, The World Bar, 24 Bayswater Rd, Potts Point, 29 September – 17 October. A PROPERTY OF THE CLAN is a Theatre-in Education play by Nick Enright, commissioned by Freewheels Theatre in Education, Newcastle in1992. Four actors play all the eight roles. The play’s structure shows the lead-up to, and the aftermath of a teenage party at the local Surf Club which with a potent mixture of alcohol, drugs, music and sexual hormones gets out of hand and…

  Australian Chamber Orchestra presents Olli Mustonen, Bach and Shostakovitch, in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House, 20 September, 2015. The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) welcomed back Olli Mustonen, “a friend and musical partner of more than two decades standing”. In this concert not only is Mr Mustonen the piano soloist of two major and highly contrasting works: JS Bach’s CONCERTO FOR KEYBOARD NO. 3 in D MAJOR, BWV1054 and Paul Hindemith’s THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS, but also the conductor and composer of his own SONATA FOR CELLO & ORCHESTRA, which is being given its World Premiere. To conclude…

THE PRESENT, is an adaptation by Andrew Upton of the, Russian, Anton Chekhov play, PLATONOV. PLATONOV was a play found “among papers ‘accessioned to the Central State Literary Archive in 1920.’ from items found in a Moscow bank depositors safe. This box was that of M.P. Chekhov – Maria Pavlovna Chekhov’s safe deposit box. She, the fiercely devoted sister of Anton. In 1923, the Soviet literary scholar, Nikolai Belchikov, introduced and annotated the previously unpublished play by Anton Chekhov. There is no certainty about when the play was written, but it seems there is some plausibility given to the idea…