Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

  SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY presents Vasily Petrenko conducting Shostakovich, Symphony No.8 in C minor, Opus 65 at the Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco. So, I have snatched a two week break in the USA. My first stop is San Francisco, where I have many work connections to re-acquaint with, it has been three years, and, both, they and I are passing too quickly through TIME, not to catch and celebrate life with them. On April 3rd, my birthday, some friends take me for dinner at the Foreign Cinema Restaurant in the Mission district. The dinner booking is at 6.30pm!!! We…

  Sydney Theatre Company and The Border Project in Association with the Adelaide Festival of Arts present VS MACBETH (Most of it) by William Shakespeare at the STC Wharf2. On entering the theatre, a warning sign on computer screens hanging from the front lighting bar, on the sides, tell us to prepare to play Chinese Whispers. The first that was passed along my row of seats was “THIS PLAY IS CURSED.” This was indeed a prescient warning for what followed. This is a collaboration with an Adelaide based company The Border Project and the Sydney Theatre Company via The Residents.…

  SYDNEY DANCE COMPANY presents 2010 Season: NEW CREATIONS at the Sydney Theatre. The Sydney Dance Company begin there new season in Sydney with two world premieres: Adam Linder’s ARE WE THAT WE ARE and Rafael Bonachela’s 6 BREATHS. Adam Linder is a young Australian born dancer/choreographer invited from Berlin, where he is now in residence, as a guest artist for this opening 2010 season. “According to Mr Linder, ARE WE THAT WE ARE is a physical exploration of altered states of consciousness within human experience. Embodying arcane states of otherness, the work investigates mysticism and spirituality, rapture and trance,…

Company B Belvoir, Griffin Theatre Company and ThinIce present LOVE ME TENDER by Tom Holloway at Belvoir St Theatre, Upstairs. Tom Holloway has had DON’T SAY THE WORDS; BEYOND THE NECK and now LOVE ME TENDER produced in Sydney, in the last three years, and has successively demonstrated, and with this play confirmed his potential as a very important contemporary voice in the Australian theatre scene. All three plays deal with confronting issues and in a literary style that is poetic and beautiful. Challenging and satisfying. Both substance and style. A voice that is growing more and more unique in…

Two Birds One Stone and Griffin Independent present S-27 by Sarah Grochala at the SBW Stables Theatre. “S-27 won the inaugural Amnesty International Protect The Human Playwriting Award and was first produced at London’s Fin borough Theatre in June 2009.” Sarah Grochala “draws on prison records and interviews with the handful of survivors of Cambodia’s infamous Toul Sleng prison” run by the Khmer Rouge. 1.5 million of that country’s citizens between 1975 and 1979 were murdered. Hem En, the staff photographer at the Tool Slang prison, has had his story told in a documentary, THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN, nominated…

  ACO, Australian Chamber Orchestra presents Tour Two, ACO Soloists at City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney. Seven pieces of music. How generous the ACO is to its patrons. Two of the pieces are by Franz Schreker, Scherzo (Composed 1900) and Intermezzo for strings,Op.8 (Composed 1900). Described in the program as “The missing link between Strauss and Schoenberg”, Schreker was greatly esteemed in his time but is nearly forgotten now. New rehabilitation of this composer, lost in the madness of the German Nazi period, has been in action, spearheaded by the Franz Schreker Foundation. These small works “display a sort…