Month: January 2019

HERRINGBONE – A Vaudeville Ghost Story, is a work by Tom Cone. With Music by Skip Kennon and Lyrics by Ellen Fitzhugh. It first appeared in 1981 and this is its Australian Premiere. It is a one man performance. Jay James-Moody takes on its mantle. For ninety minutes he sings – 14 songs – and dances everything. He gets to create and play and sustain 11 characters. SYBIL (1976), may pop into your mind. Or even the recent SPLIT (2017), may do, too, such are the amazing number of ‘possessions’ that Mr James-Moody delivers in this production. A ghost wearing…

THE BIG TIME is a new play by David Williamson. It focuses on the world of the entertainment industry. The struggle of the actor. The struggle of the writer. All of them trying to reach The Big Time. For, as Mr Williamson tells us in his Writer’s Note in the program: In the entertainment industry there’s only one place all hopefuls want to be. The Big Time. If they make it, they become wealthy, but perhaps even more importantly they are finally treated with respect. … That’s why the competition to make The Big Time is so fierce. … He…

UNGEDULD DES HERZENS (THE HEART’S IMPATIENCE), the only novel by Stefan Zweig (1939) has been devised for performance, by two of the leading avant grade theatre explorers of Europe: Schaubuhne Berlin and Theatre Complicite of the UK, under the title, BEWARE OF PITY. It was first seen in Berlin in 2015, at the Barbican in 2017 and now, in Sydney, in 2019. Simon McBurney of Complicite, working with the Schaubuhne for the first time, has led a team of seven actors: Robert Beyer, Marie Burchard, Johannes Flaschberger, Christoph Gawenda, Moritz Gottwald, Laurenz Laufenberg and Eva Meckbach into deconstructing the novel…

Le Gateau Chocolat, is a Cabaret performer from the UK. He first performed as part of the Sydney Festival in 2011. ICONS, is his new show celebrating musical heroes that have shaped his life, using his personal autobiography to catalogue the heroes and songs chosen. ‘It is a mix of pop, opera and rock with renditions (sometimes just snipped quotes) from musical legends including Whitney, Bowie, Pavarotti, Madonna and Meatloaf.’ Le Gateau Choclat is sumptuous in size and presents as a beautiful, bearded baritone gay ‘drag queen’ of Nigerian origins. He uses his own rich and expressive voice, nicely and…

LOVE AND ANGER, is back after a one night stint in the Griffin Bach Festival last April. Betty Grumble, a subversive burlesque artist from the fringe of Sydney theatre activism is, spectacularly, back. With the 1967 text, THE SCUM MANIFESTO, by Valerie Solanas – a radical feminist work – in her hands and quoted from, serving as a reference to give this work, well spine, Betty uses her body in a ‘ in-yer-face’ reveal to parody, satirise, mens’ historic objectification of women and to re-claim the sexual normality of the female. She is fearless (courageous) in the method of her…

BRETT AND WENDY – A Love Story Bound By Art, is a performance piece Created by Director, Designer Kim Carpenter, the Artistic Director of The Theatre of Image, which is celebrating its 30th Anniversary year. Says, Mr Carpenter in his program notes: “I created this script like a collage, gathering material from interviews, conversations, books, observations and personal experiences and curated them into a form as ‘I can see’”. The work attempts to explore the biographical journey of artist Brett Whitely from that of the boy, to the teenager, the student, the man, the family man, the world traveller, the…