Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Photo by Helen White Darlinghurst Theatre Company presents SAVAGES, by Patricia Cornelius, at the Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst, 1 April – 1 May. SAVAGES, is a play by Patricia Cornelius, that premiered in Melbourne in 2013, and now, finally, reaches a Sydney audience at the Eternity Playhouse. Ms Cornelius is a multi-award winning author and her work is rarely seen in this city. The last time, professionally, was a production of THE CALL, on the SBW Stables stage, for the Griffin Theatre Company. (SLUT, was seen as part of the Sydney Fringe, last year.) Macquarie Dictionary: savage  1. wild or rugged.…

  pigeonhole theatre presents, PLAYHOUSE CREATURES, by April De Angelis, at the Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre, 31 March – 9 April. PLAYHOUSE CREATURES is a play written by April De Angelis in 1993. It has not, to my memory, been presented in Sydney (or elsewhere), except at NIDA as a training exercise, directed by Tony Knight. It is a wonder that it hasn’t and a kind of further indictment of the culture we have lived through, (even with a woman leading our major theatre companies, the Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) and the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) through the nineties and…

National Theatre presents MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, by August Wilson, in the Lyttelton Theatre, National Theatre, London, U.K. August Wilson wrote a cycle of ten plays spanning the 20th century, often referred to as the Pittsburg Cycle, of which MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM, is the second, written in 1984. He was born in 1945 and died in 2005. The plays form a kind of fever chart of the trauma of slavery. Their historical trajectory takes African-Americans through their transition from property to personhood – ‘a profound articulation of the Black Tradition’. I have been fortunate to have seen many of…

bontom presents UNFINISHED WORKS, by Thomas De Angelis, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, Chippendale. March 24 – 2 April. UNFINISHED WORKS is a new play by Thomas De Angelis. In 2014 he presented his play, THE WORST KEPT SECRETS, also at the Reginald Theatre, under the auspices of his own production company, bontom. In the promotional material for this play we are told that UNFINISHED WORKS will deliver an incisive portrayal of contemporary Sydney and its culture, explor(ing) the sacrifices we make in the pursuit of our life’s work. Famous artist Frank Ralco (Lucy Goleby) is a…

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, THE BLIND GIANT IS DANCING, by Stephen Sewell, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Surry Hills, 17 February – 20 March. The primitive but stirring sound of a muted metal instrument (it, probably, a manufactured electric source) heralding the entrance of the participants to commence action on the Belvoir stage promised an heroic approach to this epic 1983, political/religious family saga, THE BLIND GIANT IS DANCING, by Stephen Sewell. I was flattered to be presented with the dense muscularity of the ideas in the language of the play – it has been so long since…

Photo by Bob Seary New Theatre presents THAT EYE, THE SKY adapted by Richard Roxburgh and Justin Monjo, from the novel by Tim Winton, at the New Theatre, Newtown. 15 March – 15 April, 2016. From the hand bill for this production at the New Theatre, of an adaption, by Richard Roxburgh and Justin Monjo, of Tim Winton’s 1986 novel, THAT EYE, THE SKY: In a small Western Australian town 13 year-old Ort Flack is coming to terms with terrible changes in his world. His father lies paralysed in a coma, his older sister is consumed by hate, his grandma…