Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Ron Haddrick passed away on February 11th this year, 2020. A memorial service was held at NIDA on Sunday 1st March that included celebrants of this man’s life: Daughter: Lyn, Son: Greg, Granddaughter: Milly. Peter Carroll was the Master of Ceremonies and invited John Bell, Aubrey Mellor, Drew Forsythe, and Kirrily Nolan to speak. The surprise guest speaker, for some of us, was cricketer, Ian Chappell. Mr Chappell apologised for his presence but soon illuminated the raison d’etre for it. As a boy Ian Chappell used to watch Ron lead one of the local cricket teams in the Adelaide suburbs…

THEY TOOK ME TO A QUEER BAR, is a devised work by Tommy Misa. Mr Misa was inspired to honour the queer artists of the past that have built through hardship, persistence, talent and luck a tradition of queer performance and the creation of spaces to present their culture and share. Mr Misa is an employee of THE BEARED TIT, a performance bar in Redfern. If those walls and many others (RED RATTLER of Marrickville) could talk, what would they tell. This  work is a series of short vignettes illustrating interactions over the history of Sydney’s evolving queer performance growth.…

ARTSLAB: BEHIND CLOSED DOORS is Shopfront’s annual emerging artists festival. It offered a 6 month long residency, an industry mentor, professional masterclasses and a week long season to showcase their art works. Five emerging artists were chosen from a large set of applications. This presentation was the fruition of that creative opportunity. There were two foyer works. 1. AMPLIFIER by Tall Jan, is a video work by Brendan Donnellan aka Tall Jan. It consists of a series of edited self-interviews concerning a sexual transition. The mentor was Bhenji Ra. It is, frankly, a work that is not well executed either…

AUSTRALIAN OPEN is a new Australian play by Angus Cameron. It is a gay-themed play playing during the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival. Humourously, the management of the Kings Cross Theatre has re-badged the building for the Festival season as the “Queen’s Cross Hotel”! Lucas (Patrick Jhanur) is a champion tennis player about to face Federer in the Australian Open final. He is an openly gay player in an open relationship with a vulnerable and conflicted partner, Felix (Tom Anson Mesker) – who is as nerdy and neurotic as his name sake is in Neil Simon’s THE ODD…

Ensemble Theatre presents a World Premiere, CRUNCH TIME, by David Williamson, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 14th February – 9th April. It is indeed ‘Crunch Time’, as this is, we are told, the last play that Mr Williamson will write. A Crunch Time that he must feel a pressure about: what, why and how he chooses to write as his ‘last testament’ on the stage. After 50 years of creative output, the most outstanding, prolific chronicler of our times, having observed, assessed and critiqued the churning social evolutions of our culture Mr Williamson puts down his ‘pen’. I have always…

Handsome Tours present KATE TEMPEST, at The Factory Theatre, 105 Victoria St. Marrickville. 19th February, 2020. Kate Tempest is a British writer, activist, performance poet. A fierce observer and commentator of our contemporary times who has delivered four albums of her work, the latest: THE BOOK OF TRAPS AND LESSONS (2019) is the principle content of this concert. She, looking clear-eyed at her nation that is ‘living in the mouth of breaking down’. This isn’t a gig its a reckoning. “We’re dead all of me knows it”, Ms Tempest opining the behaviour of the people about her ‘trapped’ with the…