Year: 2017

Photo by Clare Hawley, Asparay Photography Rocket Productions in association with bAKEHOUSE presents SHE RODE HORSES LIKE THE STOCK EXCHANGE, by Amelia Roper, at the Kings Cross Theatre (KXT), in the Kings Cross Hotel. 20 October – 11 November. SHE RODE HORSES LIKE THE STOCK EXCHANGE, written in 2014, is by an Australian playwright, Amelia Roper, who has been working and living in Los Angeles for some time. Two couples: Amy (Matilda Ridgeway) and Henry (Tom Anson Mesker), Max (Dorje Swallow) and Sara (Nikki Britton), friends because of business contacts – Amy and Max having worked as rivalling investment bankers together…

  Sitting in the Old Fitz Theatre in a newly configured traverse space with only a blond wooden floor between my audience companions on the other side, and the lighting changes – a suited figure begins to talk to us (the leader of a chorus?) – a man we come to know as Lawyer Alfieri (David Lynch) – introduces us to the situation and premise of the play in an extremely direct way (no expositional time wasting here). We learn quickly what is at stake in A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE. We absorb it carefully and take it into an…

Photo by Prudence Upton Ensemble Theatre presents, THE KITCHEN SINK, by Tom Wells, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 14 October – 18 November. THE KITCHEN SINK is a British play by Tom Wells, first shown at the Bush Theatre, London, in late 2011. It is a domestic soap-opera concerning a very ordinary British provincial city family and some of their neighbourhood denizens, all facing life-making turning-points that will initiate necessary change and so the inevitable scary adjustments, be they economic, emotional, social, spiritual, or, all of the former. Changes that will require a leap of faith that will turn out OK.…

Photo by Kate Williams Sport For Jove Theatre Co. and Seymour Centre present, NO END OF BLAME, by Howard Barker, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, Chippendale. October 12 – October 28. Sport For Jove have taken on British playwright, Howard Barker’s 1981 play NO END OF BLAME: Scenes of Overcoming. Ideas plus entertainment can equal art. Howard Barker writes plays that are robustly muscular in content (ideas!) and language usage (literate!). ‘Challenging’, might be a word to describe them. He calls his great catalogue of work: The Theatre of Catastrophe and since 1988 has run his own company:…

  Ensemble Theatre presents BUYER AND CELLAR, by Jonathan Tolins, at the Ensemble Theatre, Macdougall St. Kirribilli. 6 October – 12 November. BUYER AND CELLAR is a one man play by American Jonathan Tolins. It was inspired by the book published by Barbra Streisand: MY PASSION FOR DESIGN. Alex More is an out-of-work-actor in Los Angeles who accepts a job in the basement of a famous artist’s home, where there has been a curation of the objects of career and the wide-ranging interests of this star. Alex will take the daily care of them. He discovers that his employer is…

New Theatre presents BIRDLAND, by Simon Stephens, at the New Theatre, King St., Newtown. 3 October – 4 November. BIRDLAND, is a British play written, in 2014, by Simon Stephens. Simon Stephens, generally, writes from a ‘working class’ perspective (the provincial English city of Stockport is the usual location) and focuses on the struggles of particular ordinary individuals dealing with the social and materialistic difficulties that the ‘progress’ of the world throws up/at them. Mr Stephens is a very prolific and critically celebrated writer and his output includes, amongst many plays: BLUEBIRD (1998), HERONS (2001), PORT (2002), ON THE SHORE…