Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

David Stone, James L. Nederlander, Barbara Whitman, Patrick Catullo, Second Stage Theatre, Carole Rothman, and Ellen Richard present NEXT TO NORMAL at the Booth Theater, Broadway. This is a six character musical. It is an intimate, dramatic, almost naturalistic psycho-drama. It was nominated in 2009 for eleven Tony Awards. It won three: Best Original Score. Best Orchestration. Best performance by a Leading Lady. This work won, controversially, the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2010. This is a musical about a woman, Diana (Alice Ripley), suffering from bipolar disorder, uncoiled from the death of her very young son and an inability…

NORTH ATLANTIC by James Strahs. A Wooster Group production, presented by the Baryshnikov Arts Centre, at the Baryshnikov Arts Centre’s Jerome Robbins Theatre. NORTH ATLANTIC by James Strahs is a satirical dash through an American military experience. It is set in the waning years of the Cold War on an American aircraft carrier where the military strategies/jargon of the crew, both male and female, are infused /confused with the breathless innuendo of the hard core gobbledegook of officialdom and the sexual undertowings of the underlings on duty. With the urge of sex winning the battle for attention with this crew.…

A WHITE BOX THEATRE Production in association with B Sharp present BANG by Jonathan Gavin at the Downstairs Theatre. BANG by Jonathan Gavin is a really good night at the theatre. A new Australian play. The first act of this play presents a collection of characters and spins a ‘web’ of connection for them all, to a fate at a railway station platform, where just before the interval break, there is a BANG, which is a suicide terrorist bomb explosion. The second act continues the unravelling connection of these characters. It is, on the whole, a very moving and human…

Sydney Theatre Company presents the Residents in ORESTEIA by Aeschylus. In a new adaptation by Tom Wright at the Wharf 1. Tom Wright has adapted the Aeschylus ORESTEIA. He is also the Director. It is, “…of course a trilogy. This production isn’t. It’s a version mainly of the first two plays in the trilogy, AGAMEMNON and CHOEPHORI (the Libation Bearers), with a dues ex machina at the end. Apollo’s speech of conclusion is based on his words in Aeschylus’ third play, EUMENIDES, but fundamentally this version isn’t an attempt to present the whole catastrophe. It’s an attempt at a distillation,…

The VIVID LIVE program present THE SHIPMENT at the Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House. Part of the VIVID Live program curated by Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. THE SHIPMENT is a production from the Young Jean Lee Theater Company. Young Jean Lee is the writer and director and is of Korean-American background. The reputation of her company in dealing with social-political issues and observations is quite and quietly growing around the theatre ‘fringes’ of the United States. THE SHIPMENT is a ‘variety’, vaudeville type program: dances, Stand –up comedy, short sketches, song and finally an extended playlet. It reminded…

Siren Theatre Co and Sidetrack Theatre present THE SEAGULL by Anton Chekhov in a new version by Christopher Hampton. I traveled by bus out to Sidetrack Theatre in Marrickville, not so far away. The bus(428), in fact, stops directly outside the venue. Inside the theatre, a converted assembly hall or drill hall of times past, the wooden interior walls are painted an attractive blue-grey black. The audience’s seating is raked steeply into the rafters of the architecture. Later, in the interval, passing onto a wooden patio, amongst gas heating stands, as it is winter, to refresh with a drink or…