Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Photo by Tracey Schramm Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) present, SPRING AWAKENING – THE MUSICAL, Books and Lyrics by Steven Sater, Music by Duncan Sheik, based on the original play, by Frank Wedekind, at the ATYP Studio, Wharf 4, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay, 27 April – 14 May. This is the third production of SPRING AWAKENING – The Musical, that I have seen. I saw the original Broadway production at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre in 2008, and the, relatively, mis-conceived production by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2010. This production of the musical based, ‘roughly’, on the Frank Wedekind…

Photo by Nick McKinlay bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company presents, an Australian premiere of BLACK JESUS, by Anders Lustgarten, at the Kings Cross Theatre (KXT), in the Kings Cross Hotel, 29 April – 21 May. BLACK JESUS, introduces to the Australian (Sydney) audience, a political/activist writer, Anders Lustgarten. He lives in Britain and was the inaugural winner of the Harold Pinter Prize. His plays have included amongst others: IF YOU DON’T LET US DREAM, WE WON’T LET YOU SLEEP (2013) – concerned with financial capitalism; LAMPEDUSA (2015) – concerned with the refugee/migrant situation in Europe. BLACK JESUS, written in 2013, is set in…

Photo by Amanda James Riversides Theatre presents, National Theatre of Parramatta, with SWALLOW, by Stef Smith, in the Lennox Theatre, Riversides Theatre, Parramatta. 21 – 30 April. SWALLOW, is a work by Scottish writer, Stef Smith. It was presented last year, 2015, at the Edinburgh Festival. It tells of three women: Rebecca (Megan Drury), responding (acting out) in a rage to the desertion by her boy friend to another woman; of Anna (Luisa Hastings Edge), an artist suffering from a breakdown depression who cannot leave her apartment and smashes it in pursuit of creativity; and of Sam (Valerie Berry), in…

  Mad March Hare Theatre Company in association with Red Line Productions present, BELLEVILLE by Amy Herzog, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral St, Wooloomooloo. 20 April – 12 May. BELLEVILLE (2011) is the second play by Amy Herzog that we have seen in Sydney. 4000 Miles, we saw in a production by Anthony Skuse, in May, 2013 (it has just finished a re-rehearsed regional tour). Amy Herzog writes plays observing the details of situation concerning fairly everyday contemporary people. The writing style is part of what I have called “slow theatre” where the action of the play has long…

Photo by Prudence Upton Sydney Theatre Company presents DISGRACED, by Ayad Akhtar, in Wharf 1, at the Sydney Theatre Company (STC), Hickson Rd.,Walsh Bay, 16 April – 4 June, 2016. DISGRACED is the 2013 Pulitzer Prize winning play by Ayad Akhtar. DISGRACED, is the typical well made American play that I talked about in my Diary entry about THE WHALE. A small cast of five in a single setting with a subtly disguised exposition that introduces the protagonists with their differences and backgrounds. Emily (Sophie Ross), a middle aged white woman, a practising, ambitious ‘figurative’ artist – painter, politically naive…

We sit in the cavernous Bay 17 and face a huge black-curtained void. When the performance commences we are confronted, quite closely, with a suited figure, in a specific, intimate kind of light, in a wide-armed gesture standing on a raised, small mirrored-floor oblong. The figure (Luke Mullins), with a visible face-microphone assisting, begins in an intimate sotto voce (with pronounced sibilant ‘ss’s’), a 50 minute conversation with his ‘self’. This nameless figure reveals his job as that of a body double for a film actor, Kane – an actor of second/third tier suspense thrillers, adventures e.g. “Briefcase Bomb 2”…