Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Sydney Opera House and Etihad Airway present, MARK MORRIS DANCE GROUP, in The Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG) performed at the Sydney Opera House bringing PACIFIC (1995), A WOODEN TREE (2012), WHELM (April, 2015) and FESTIVAL DANCE (2011) – a program covering some twenty years of his thirty-year output. This presentation felt very much a touring production with just the dancers in costume, with some lighting states, backed by a cyclorama to ‘colour’ the works – no Set Design at all (there was a lack of care in the presentation, as well, as from…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti Belvoir and La Boite Theatre Company present, SAMSON, by Julia-Rose Lewis, in the Belvoir St Downstairs Theatre, Surry Hills. 7May – 31 May. SAMSON, is a new Australian play, by Julia-Rose Lewis. It is a first play and was ‘read’ at the National Play Festival, presented by Playwriting Australia, at Carriageworks, in June 2014. I felt that there has been some further development of the text since last year, when I first saw it. The play tells of four young Australians, living in ‘an edge suburb of Australia’, on the cusp of adulthood, and facing all of…

  Bullant productions presents, BITCH BOXER by Charlotte Josephine, at the Old 505 Theatre, Hibernian House, 342 Elizabeth St, Central Railway. 26 May – 31 May. BITCH BOXER, is an award winning monologue from a young British playwright, Charlotte Josephine, written in 2012. Katherine Shearer after having seen it performed in the Adelaide Fringe, snaffled the performing rights and has found a creative team to support her ambition to present it in Sydney, at the Old 505 Theatre. Like many a young artist in Sydney (check out, THIS BOY’S IN LOVE blog), Ms Shearer is showcasing her own talents, using her…

  THIS BOY’S IN LOVE, by Adriano Cappeletta, at the Old Fitz Theatre, cnr Cathedral and Dowling St, Woolloomooloo. 26 May -31 May. Adriano Cappeletta has written and plays in a Cabaret monologue called, THIS BOY’S IN LOVE, at the Old Fitz Theatre, as the late night show. In his Writer’s Notes Mr Cappeletta says: … THIS BOY’S IN LOVE is somewhere between my version of a gay rom com and a personal meditation on self-acceptance and letting love in. Mr Cappeletta is an acting graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) and of a two year course…

Belvoir presents, THE WIZARD OF OZ, after L. Frank Baum, in the Belvoir St Upstairs Theatre, Surry Hills, May 2 – May 31. THE  WIZARD OF OZ, is Directed by Adena Jacobs, following on from her HEDDA GABLER ‘investigation – interrogation” last year for the Belvoir audience. This is not an adaption of the novel, or even of the famous film. From the program notes: Jacobs stark re-imagining of L. Frank Baum’s narrative masterpiece (1900) is an abstract theatrical poem about innocence, grief and the terror of growing up. The production is not a stage adaption of the novel, rather Jacobs…

  The Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove present, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, by William Shakespeare, in the York Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, Chippendale. 22 May – 30 May. Sport For Jove present Shakespeare’s THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, at the Seymour Centre, Directed by Richard Cottrell. This play, once a popular choice, is rarely played, professionally, today in Australia – as with THE TAMING OF THE SHREW – and so I looked forward to this production with much curiosity. To prepare myself, I re-read the play, and pulled out of my book collection, John Gross’ SHYLOCK – Four Hundred…