Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Bell Shakespeare presents, HENRY V, in the Playhouse, at the Sydney Opera House, 21 Oct – 14 Nov, 2014. Some children and their teachers are trapped in a classroom/bunker in London during the German Blitzreig of World War Two. The teachers provide the children the text of HENRY V, by William Shakespeare, to read and rehearse in an improvised manner, to distract them from the surrounding chaos. With a concussive Sound Design (Composer and Sound Design, Steve Francis), and Lighting Design (Sian James-Holland), an atmosphere of alarm outside the room brings a reality of war to the environment. Anne Gardiner…

Performance Space presents FALLING WOMAN, Created by Alice Osborne and Halcyon Macleod, at Carriageworks, Track 8. 26 – 29 November, 2014. FALLING WOMAN is a new Australian play with an idea initiated, devised and performed by Alice Osborne, written and directed by Halcyon Macleod. The text is a voiceover of, for most of the time, a highly poetic odyssey – recently, Ms Macleod’s work at Campbelltown Arts Centre: MANTLE, also featured this kind of radio-play conceit (think Radio National’s, Poetica) – however, in this case it features a disembodied voice with, also, live microphone interpolations from The Woman (Alice Osborne),…

Sydney Symphony Orchestra present ENIGMA VARIATIONS and ZIMMERMAN PLAYS SIBELIUS, in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House, December 3, 5, 6, 2014. Shamefully, I have not gone to any concert this year with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. But the Variations on an Original Theme, Op.36 [Enigma], by Edward Elgar (1899) has always been an amusing favourite, so off I went, further ‘bribed’ by the opportunity to hear Sinfonia da Requiem, Op. 20 by Benjamin Britten (1941), and the Finnish Violinist, Frank Peter Zimmermann, play the Violin Concerto in D minor, Op.47 (1904), by Jean Sibelius. All conducted by…

Photo by Helen White Darlinghurst Theatre Co, Proudly Supported by The Enright Family, present DAYLIGHT SAVING, by Nick Enright, at the Eternity Playhouse. 31 Oct – 30 Nov. DAYLIGHT SAVING, is an Australian play, by Nick Enright, written in 1989, that had its first performance at the Ensemble Theatre. What one can best admire about this play, today, is the mastery which Enright demonstrates in assembling his structure for a form of theatre writing that is notoriously difficult: the comic farce. For, the situation chosen and the text are, today, more than faintly, a little hoary, to really work in November,…

To begin the year with this post is to mark the inevitable passing of time and the fate that comes to all of us: Death. When I was appointed Head of Acting, by John Clark, in 1985, at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), there were three of the Great Foot Soldiers of the Performing Arts, Theatre Division, already present, to guide, support, and most importantly, teach me. One was Keith Bain (who, of course, had taught me as a student there in 1971), the others: Doreen Hogan and Betty Williams. Keith taught Movement. Doreen and Betty taught Voice. Later,…

Photo by by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, adapted by Benedict Hardie and Anne-Louise Sarks from the novel by Charles Dickens, in The Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 8 November – 24 December. In the United States, where I have spent many a Christmas, the two perennial theatre offers were the Tchaikovsky two-act ballet, THE NUTCRACKER, at the Opera House, and a play adaption of Charles Dickens’, A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I have seen several different versions of the Dickens novella staged, and the two at the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT), in San Francisco, umpteen times – it has…