Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Belvoir presents PERSONA, a FRAUGHT OUTFIT production. Based on the film by Ingmar Bergman. Conceived by Adena Jacobs, Dayna Morrissey and Danny Pettingill in the Upstairs Belvoir Theatre. PERSONA is a film made by Ingmar Bergman in 1966 – writer, director. It is regarded by some to be his masterpiece and is rated highly as one of the top – greatest – films ever made. Much discourse can be found as people attempt to analyze every element of the film. Study the critical essays and you can be bewildered. If you go on line it will overwhelm you. At best, I simply…

Photo by Marco Borggreve Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO). Tour Five: BAREFOOT FIDDLER: Patricia Kopatchinskaja in the Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House. Patricia Kopatchinskaja is known as the Barefoot Fiddler, because she is bare-footed when she plays her violin, and on this tour is the guest artist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, (ACO), and, as with her stint with the orchestra in July 2010 is the Director of the program and lead violinist. It is as physically dynamic as last time and just as musically thrilling. Ms Kopatchinskaja has organised for this visit, a program to utilise the individual solo talents of…

Griffin Theatre Company presents The Sydney Premiere of BEACHED by Melissa Bubnic at the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross. BEACHED is a new play by Melissa Bubnic. It concerns the making of a Reality Television program (Producer: Arka Das) that covers the 235 day countdown to a gastric bypass operation for a young man, Arty, or Arthur Arthur (Blake Davis), who is disabled by obesity – an 18 year old boy weighing 400 kilograms, “the world’s fattest teenager” – and his efforts on that journey, including a Pathways to Work officer’s intervention, Louise (Kate Mulvany), so that Arty “can get…

Ken Unsworth in collaboration with Australian Dance Artists presents SOIReE SFORZA, at the Unsworth Studio, Alexandria, Sydney. ART: the production or expression of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance (Macquarie Dictionary). I observe, even in this world today, there are some people that are ‘cursed’ with a need to make Art. They have been always ‘cursed’, and that ‘curse’ drives them on and on. It seems, relentlessly. For them that ‘curse’ has been a blessing – and they pursue it at all expense, and they would say, no expense too great. SOIReE SFORZA is an evening…

Presented by Performance Space and Mobile States: I’M YOUR MAN at Carriageworks. A Belvoir production, created by Roslyn Oades. I’M YOUR MAN Created and Directed by Roslyn Oades, is the final part of a headphone-verbatim trilogy, STORIES OF LOVE AND HATE and FAST CARS AND TRACTOR ENGINES, being the predecessors. This work explores the world of a boxing gym. Ms Oades has set out to investigate courage within the context of specific sociopolitical worlds, and even the titles of the previous work gives you some perspective of the fields of play she has revealed – all to critical success. The…

  Fat Boy Dancing and we do not happen present, THE LIGHT BOX by Natalia Savvides at 107 Projects – 107 Refern St, Redfern. Natalie Savvides is an emerging Australian playwright and she writes to us in the program: THE LIGHT BOX is a play inspired by my research into the experiences of women in colonial asylums. As the play grew over the course of two developments led by James Dalton, the characters seemed to take on lives of their own, and more fantastical elements emerged. When a man made of spoons and a toucan walked onto the page, and…