Year: 2019

JOHN, is a play by American writer, Annie Baker. It is the third play by Ms Baker that the Outhouse Theatre Co have produced for Sydney audiences. THE ALIENS and THE FLICK. All three Directed by Craig Baldwin. All three of them have been extremely rewarding nights in the theatre. Ms Baker becomes more interesting and more daring with each play. JOHN takes you somewhere beautiful and is gentle in taking you there. JOHN, is, in literal length, a three-hour fifteen-minute experience (with two short intervals). Set in the living space and breakfast room of a Bed and Breakfast (B&B) accommodation…

I reckon that you can trust the Russian composers for a great experience in Concert. So, it was last Saturday. I had never heard the Khachaturian Violin Concerto in D minor ever. In fact I know little of the output of Khachaturian, the ballet scores: GAYANE and SPARTACUS, the most familiar. Aram Katchaturian was of Armenian extraction, educated as a child in Tiblisi, Georgia – that city being important to Josef Stalin. Stalin was extremely interested and demanding in his concerns for the influence of the Arts on his citizenry and, in particular, that of the influence of Music. During…

The EMERSON STRING QUARTET. One of the world’s great string quartets. They must be heard live. I have their recording of the Shostakovich Quartets (2000), which may account for part of my love obsession around all of the music by Shostakovich. Included in Program One was a Shostakovich quartet scheduled – so, no brainer – I had to attend. The Emerson String Quartet, which took its name from the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was formed in 1976, while they were studying at Juilliard. In 2013, the Quartet was reconfigured when cellist Paul Watkins joined the original members…

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, is a work, an autobiographical work from Tony Kushner. He is famous for ANGELS IN AMERICA (1993) – maybe, as well, for the screenplay of LINCOLN (2012). Born in Manhattan, his family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana, when he was a young boy. He wanted to write about race relations, the civil rights movement,  African Americans and Southern Jews in the early 1960’s. This play comes from sorrow, from anger and grief, and also from hope learned from history, from recent history, which has shown us both the terrors and also the pleasures of change, which shows that…

Mike Bartlett wrote AN INTERVENTION in 2014. He had just had an amazing response to his quasi-Jacobean verse play called KING CHARLES III, which Sydney saw on tour here a few years ago in the Roslyn Packer Theatre. Mr Bartlett is, probably, the outstanding young male writer in the British Theatre at the moment – ‘hot, hot, hot’. The Old Fitz introduced his work to Sydney with a production of COCK (2009) and later with BULL (2013). AN INTERVENTION, is a play for two actors: A and B – the roles are not gender or age specific. In this instance at…

WEST SIDE STORY debuted in 1957 on Broadway. Four genius artists somehow subdued their egos to collaborate as an Ensemble to produce one of the great works in the Musical Theatre canon: Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins. A motion picture version was made and arrived in 1961 winning 10 Academy Awards – it created a permanent number of indelible moments. (please read my 2010 review of another production of WEST SIDE STORY*** to get my grasp of this work’s greatness). This production led by American Choreographer/Director, Joey McKneely is the second version of this iconic work…