Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Photo by Jeff Busby John Frost and Suzanne Jones by arrangement with The Production Company present Andrew Lloyd Webber’s New Production of THE WIZARD OF OZ, at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney. 30 December – 4 February. THE WIZARD OF OZ, is a classic Hollywood film of 1939, based on a Book by American, L. Frank Baum. Everybody, as a child must have seen it. I saw it at the cinema (in Bondi Junction) as a child and never got over the Flying Monkeys – they terrified me – and the ‘creepy’ munchkins. Of course, then I saw it again, over…

This is the completion of the TENTH year of this blog – oh, my! So, in many ways but one, for me, 2017, was not a very stable year or a good one – you know, Trump, Aussie politics, Global Warming (Ageing!). The exception was the general quality of the theatre work (and film) that I got to see in Sydney this year. In that regard, 2017 was a very good year. Just look at these listings! NEW AUSTRALIAN PLATWRITING. Of the many new Australian plays of 2017 here are my outstanding experiences, in no particular order. Monkey Baa’s DIARY…

Hi all. Theatre gone quiet – holiday mode before the Sydney Festival onslaught. So, here are some movies that I have seen accompanied with a ‘trifling’ comment. 1. CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. This is the much talked about ‘art film’ of this awards season. It is Directed by Luca Guadagino, and completes what he regards as the Desire Trilogy. The other two films being I AM LOVE (2009) and A BIGGER SPLASH (2015) – both with Tilda Swinton. It is adapted from a novel by Andre Aciman, by the famous James Ivory (of the Merchant/Ivory film team.) It tells…

With this year adaptations of Shakespeare’s MEASURE FOR MEASURE and Carlo Goldoni’s THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS, Sport For Jove (SFJ) present their ninth summer season at Bella Vista Farm, and in Leura, in the Everglades Gardens. Lizzie Schebesta, the Director of MEASURE FOR MEASURE, declares in her program notes to be ‘an unashamedly feminist theatre maker and will frack my way into a play to bring out its female voice.’ So with excision of text – even a whole sub-plot and several characters – and much re-writing, with a Design concept (Sallyanne Facer) that liberally borrows from contemporary television…

Lies, Lies And Propaganda, in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Co. presents A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Adapted from the Charles Dickens novel by Melissa Lee Speyer, at the Kings Cross Theatre (KXT), Kings Cross Hotel. 14-24 December. This is a version of Charles Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL that is so opposite the Belvoir delight of a few years ago that a proper regard of the company title that is presenting this new work at the Kings Cross Theatre (KXT): Lies, Lies and Propaganda, ought to be fully digested before considering taking your children. The writer, Melissa Lee Speyer, along with her Director,…

  Red Line presents, Andrew Henry’s VERTICAL DREAMING, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Woolloomooloo. 5-15 December. Andrew Henry – an actor/artist – has, from a very personal experience of depression, curated a dream of a vertical kind: a digging down and up into the psyche, using some found poetry, adjusted, sometimes, for his own ‘truth’, with ‘the simple goal that this encourages others to talk and share and understand that it is ok not to be ok. … That it is normal, and you are not alone.’ Mr Henry informs us in the program notes, that this work has been…