Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Lume Productions presents THE GULF, by Audrey Cefaly, at the FLOW Warehouse, 59 Denison St., Camperdown. 24 August – 5 September. THE GULF, is by a young American (Southern) writer, Audrey Cefaly. It first appeared in 2016, and has two female characters – intimates – drifting in a boat in the Alabama Delta, part of the Gulf of Mexico, fishing and confronting the coming changes in their lives. Betty (Brenna Harding) is preparing to go to college and leaving town, while Kendra (Diana Popovska) from a different class (background) ponders her own more simple needs to have a future. The…

Theatre Eccentrique with the Old 505 presents the Australian Premiere of I’D RATHER GOYA ROBBED ME OF MY SLEEP THAN SOME OTHER SON OF A BITCH, by Rodrigo Garcia, at the Old 505 Theatre, Eliza St, Newtown. 22 August – 2 September. I’D RATHER GOYA ROBBED ME OF MY SLEEP THAN SOME OTHER SON OF A BITCH, is a fifty minute monologue by Argentinian-Spanish artist, Rodrigo Garcia, in a translation commissioned by Cartwright Productions. Directed by Anna Jahjah, Gerry Sont gives us a monologue from a dissolute father who attempts to re-direct his two young sons (the youngest is a…

Opera Australia present PARSIFAL, an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner, Libretto by the composer, in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House. August 9,12 (matinee), 14 August. Leading the Opera Australia Orchestra, Pinchas Steinberg, as Conductor, harnessed an impressive cast of performers to give a concert version of this work of real beauty. Jonas Kaufmann sensitively (carefully) sang the leading role of Parsifal, supported by Michelle De Young, as Kundry; supported by an impressively powerful Kwangchul Youn, as Gurnemantz; Michael Honeyman, as Amfortas; and Warwick Fyfe, as Kilngsor (his physical inhabiting of the character and his function…

Photo by Clare Hawley MELBA, A New Musical, Book and Lyrics by Nicholas Christo. Music by Johannes Luebbers, Adapted from the book “Marvelous Melba” by Ann Blainey. At the Hayes Theatre, Greenknowe Ave, Darlinghurst. 15 August – 9 September. MELBA, is a new Australian Musical. It has been nurtured through the New Musical Australia, Hayes Theatre Co’s musical theatre development program. In 2014 TRUTH, BEAUTY AND A PICTURE OF YOU, by Tim Freedman and Alex Broun was presented by the company. THE DETECTIVES HANDBOOK, by Ian Ferrington and Olga Solar was presented in 2016 and now MELBA, by Nicholas Christo…

Photo by by Marnya Rothe Sport For Jove and the Seymour Centre present, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, by Dale Wasserman, adapted from the novel by Ken Kesey, in the Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, Chippendale. August 3 – 19, 2017. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST is best known as the Academy Award laden Milos Forman film, made in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson as Randle P. McMurphy and Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched. The essential core of the work is the battle between the Dionysian spirit with the formally controlled world that permits it to function for the supposed ‘greater…

Darlinghurst Theatre Company present, KINDERTRANSPORT, by Diane Samuels, at the Eternity Playhouse, Burton St., Darlinghurst, 28 July – 20 August. KINDERTRANSPORT, is an English play written in 1993, by Diane Samuels. Diane Samuels has written: In early November 1938 an intensive series of ‘pogrom’ attacks on Jewish property and arrests of people were launched in Nazi Germany. This became known as ‘Kristallnacht’, The Night of Broken Glass, and has subsequently been called “pogromnacht’ or Novemberpogrome’. In the wake of this calculated violence the British government was lobbied by Jewish humanitarian and Quaker organisations to provide refuge. Ten thousand permits were…