Year: 2017

PATERSON PATERSON is a new film by Jim Jarmusch. It follows a week (a Monday to Monday) in the life of Paterson (Adam Driver), a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey, who writes poetry, is married to Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), a home-body ‘adventuring’ with artistic explorations in ‘black and white’ forays, with an English Bulldog, called Marvin (Nellie), for company. Every day has a similar pattern of task, at variance only on the weekend. It is about the little everyday world and the ordinary intimacies of exchange between the casual acquaintances of the bus route and his nightly visit to…

Photo by Rupert Reid Real Harpy, White Box Theatre in Association with Red Line Productions present, I HATE YOU MY MOTHER, by Jeanette Cronin, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral St. Woolloomooloo, 24 January – 11 February. I HATE YOU MY MOTHER, is a new play by Jeanette Cronin. Ms Cronin is well loved and respected as an actor, especially, in Sydney. In 2014, Ms Cronin presented her first play as a writer: TELL ME AGAIN, which was followed up a year later with QUEEN BETTE. I enjoyed them very much. In each Ms Cronin also starred. Her third play, I…

THE INSPECTION, by Richie Black, at the Old 505 Theatre, Eliza St, Newtown, 25 January – 28 January. I saw this production without invitation and completely accidentally. I got my theatre’s mixed up and went to the wrong place. I couldn’t get to where I had promised, so, I stayed and watched this fledgling work instead. Maybe, this is my FIRST acknowledged symptom of an encroaching senility?!!!! Anyway, what was most pleasing about this accidental night in the theatre was the fact that THE INSPECTION, produced by Julian Ramundi, was a restricted showing of a new work. It had been…

  Ensemble Theatre presents ODD MAN OUT, by David Williamson, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 19 January – 18 March. ODD MAN OUT, is a new Australian play, by David Williamson. The play explores a relationship between Ryan (Justin Stewart Cotta), a ‘numbers’ genius employed and paid well by a Big Bank for his skills, who suffers from an undiagnosed case of Aspergers’ Syndrome and Alice (Lisa Gormley) a 38 year old physical therapist counting down her fertility clock with some urgency. We watch Ryan and Alice meet on a bus (what he is doing on bus, with all his…

The year has begun with some ‘flicks’ of a wonderfully high order. JACKIE JACKIE is Directed by Pablo Larrain (NERUDA), Written by Noah Oppenheim. It focuses on the 4 days after the assassination of President John Kennedy and the public ceremony that commemorated his funeral. The framework of the story we are told is centred around the famous interview between LIFE Magazine journalist, Theodore H White and Jackie Kennedy. This gives room for the film to roam, selectively, back and forth over the life of Jackie with Kennedy, with an especially interesting re-creation of the black and white White House…

CHAMPIONS, from Form Dance Projects for Sydney Festival. World Premiere, in Bay 17, Carriageworks, Redfern, 17 – 22 January. Martin del Amo, is responsible for Concept and Direction, also, Choreography and Text (along with the Dancers) for CHAMPIONS. He says in the program notes: A commonly held belief is that sport and the arts do not go together. The argument goes that artists often think of athletes as competition-obsessed ‘boofheads’, while in turn, athletes deride artists as self-indulgent ‘wankers’. … CHAMPIONS is a dance piece presented as if it is a sporting event. … The largest of the performing spaces…