Year: 2016

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, THE BLIND GIANT IS DANCING, by Stephen Sewell, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Surry Hills, 17 February – 20 March. The primitive but stirring sound of a muted metal instrument (it, probably, a manufactured electric source) heralding the entrance of the participants to commence action on the Belvoir stage promised an heroic approach to this epic 1983, political/religious family saga, THE BLIND GIANT IS DANCING, by Stephen Sewell. I was flattered to be presented with the dense muscularity of the ideas in the language of the play – it has been so long since…

Photo by Bob Seary New Theatre presents THAT EYE, THE SKY adapted by Richard Roxburgh and Justin Monjo, from the novel by Tim Winton, at the New Theatre, Newtown. 15 March – 15 April, 2016. From the hand bill for this production at the New Theatre, of an adaption, by Richard Roxburgh and Justin Monjo, of Tim Winton’s 1986 novel, THAT EYE, THE SKY: In a small Western Australian town 13 year-old Ort Flack is coming to terms with terrible changes in his world. His father lies paralysed in a coma, his older sister is consumed by hate, his grandma…

  The Royal Court Theatre presents ESCAPED ALONE, by Caryl Churchill, in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Sloane Square, London, 21 January – 8 March, 2016. An elderly woman, a Mrs Jarrett (Lindsay Barrett), looks at us and says: “I’m walking down the street and there’s a door in the fence and inside are three women I’ve seen before.” and she goes in. So, we spend an hour with three old, comfortable friends, Sally (Deborah Findlay), Lena (Kika Markham) and Vi (June Watson) and a neighbour on a summer afternoon on a small grassed backyard lawn having tea in rickety chairs.…

Photo by Rupert Reid Thread Entertainment in association with Red Line Productions  present 80 MINUTES NO INTERVAL, by Travis Cotton, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral St. Wooloomooloo, 11 March – 9 April. One of my mantras has been when working in the theatre: “The writer is God.” I have always held the writer in the highest esteem, especially the playwright, and in my working as an Actor, Director or Teacher of Acting, I have always applied a kind of ‘forensic fanaticism’ to the writer’s words and clues, including the syntax and even the lay out on the printed page,…

Red Line presents THE WHALE, by Samuel D. Hunter, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral St Wooloomooloo. 4 Feb – 4 March. THE WHALE, written by American writer, Samuel D. Hunter in 2012, has all of the ingredients of a classically constructed play – it ticks all (most) of the boxes of ‘good’, audience-friendly playwriting, tried and still true. A realist environment we all know; characters (we might nearly know) with complicated back stories; enough contemporary issues that we can, relatively, associate with: morbid obesity, religious tyranny and its corroding influence, sexual taboos, gay (bi-sexual) family, adolescent angst; and a…

  A Night of Play presents BULLY BOY, by Sandi Toksvig, at the Blood Moon Theatre at The World Bar, Bayswater Rd., Kings Cross. 10 March – 26 March. BULLY BOY is the nickname belonging to a group of British soldiers assigned to the war in Afghanistan. It concerns the investigation of an ‘incident’ in the heat of war, where a mother and son were killed during a skirmish – the 8 year-old boy thrown down a well, where he drowned – ‘collateral damage’. BULLY BOY, written in 2011, by Sandi Toksvig, is a play for two actors. Over the…