Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

  Bell Shakespeare present, RICHARD 3, by William Shakespeare, in the Playhouse Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. 25 February – 1st April. RICHARD III is a play written by William Shakespeare c. 1592, early in his career. The Bell Shakespeare present at the Sydney Opera House RICHARD 3,  a dramaturgical collaboration between Director, Peter Evans and actor Kate Mulvany using the Shakespeare original. The play has been hand-crafted with this actor and company in mind, it seems. This is their third collaboration, JULIUS CAESAR and MACBETH, being the previous two. Kate Mulvany is also playing this Richard 3, and…

  Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, presents HANDEL’S MESSIAH, in the City Recital Hall, Angel Place, Sydney. March, 2017. Paul Dyer, leader of the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, has invited a young theatre Director, Constantine Costi, to prepare, with him, a performance of George Frederic Handel’s, MESSIAH. In a speedy two hour performance, including interval, this great and famous English Oratorio, has all barefooted – orchestra, chorus, soloists and conductor – perhaps, that the reason for fleet-footed tempo. THE BAREFOOT MESSIAH, in the City Recital Hall. In the program notes we are told that Handel always intended his oratorios as entertainment, to be…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents A Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre Production of AWAY, by Michael Gow, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, 23 February – 25 March. Michael Gow’s AWAY is a ‘classic’ Australian play much loved by Australian audiences. I have seen some countless numbers of productions and, I believe, this is the fifth professional production that I have seen. I saw the first production for the Griffin Theatre Company at the SBW Stables Theatre in 1986, Directed by Peter Kingston. One for the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne in 1986, Directed by Neil Armfield.…

1.THE LOVE WITCH. THE LOVE WITCH is a 2016 film, Written and Directed by Anna Biller. The story is of a woman betrayed by her husband, who murders him, and then embarks on a career as a seducer of men using witchcraft in her pursuit of the ONE. It is filmed as a horror-thriller, without much horror or thrill. It also sets out to create a filmic homage to the mode of the 1960’s studio output, with elaborate set and costume and a colour palette of period technicolour. It is filmed in Eureka, California and has the Hitchcock THE BIRDS,…

THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, is a new play from Lachlan Philpott. It had its premiere season in Belfast in 2013 and played last year in Melbourne. Written in a kind of open verse style with a duo of actors narrating as a Greek Chorus (Thomas Campbell, Niki Owen) and interacting as minor characters, four other actors embody the major characters to tell the story of Harry Crawford in the working class suburbs of Sydney in the early years of the last century. In virtual poverty, Annie Birkett (Jane Phegan) cares for a house for her son, Harry (Jonas Thomson), and…

Photo by John Marmaras Red Line Productions and the sponsorship of Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras presents, THE JUDAS KISS, by David Hare, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral St, Woolloomooloo, 15 February -11 March. THE JUDAS KISS, is a play by David Hare, written in 1998. Neil Armfield Directed it for Belvoir St Theatre, a few years ago, and Directed it again in 2013 in London to acclaim, apparently, making a claim for the play’s reputation that it had failed to establish in its first outing. The First Act of the play occurs on the 5th of April, 1895,…