Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

Photo by Phyllis Wong Don’t Look Away and Blancmange Productions present, A PROPERTY OF THE CLAN, by Nick Enright, at the Blood Moon Theatre, The World Bar, 24 Bayswater Rd, Potts Point, 29 September – 17 October. A PROPERTY OF THE CLAN is a Theatre-in Education play by Nick Enright, commissioned by Freewheels Theatre in Education, Newcastle in1992. Four actors play all the eight roles. The play’s structure shows the lead-up to, and the aftermath of a teenage party at the local Surf Club which with a potent mixture of alcohol, drugs, music and sexual hormones gets out of hand and…

  Australian Chamber Orchestra presents Olli Mustonen, Bach and Shostakovitch, in the Concert Hall at the Sydney Opera House, 20 September, 2015. The Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) welcomed back Olli Mustonen, “a friend and musical partner of more than two decades standing”. In this concert not only is Mr Mustonen the piano soloist of two major and highly contrasting works: JS Bach’s CONCERTO FOR KEYBOARD NO. 3 in D MAJOR, BWV1054 and Paul Hindemith’s THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS, but also the conductor and composer of his own SONATA FOR CELLO & ORCHESTRA, which is being given its World Premiere. To conclude…

THE PRESENT, is an adaptation by Andrew Upton of the, Russian, Anton Chekhov play, PLATONOV. PLATONOV was a play found “among papers ‘accessioned to the Central State Literary Archive in 1920.’ from items found in a Moscow bank depositors safe. This box was that of M.P. Chekhov – Maria Pavlovna Chekhov’s safe deposit box. She, the fiercely devoted sister of Anton. In 1923, the Soviet literary scholar, Nikolai Belchikov, introduced and annotated the previously unpublished play by Anton Chekhov. There is no certainty about when the play was written, but it seems there is some plausibility given to the idea…

Justin Cotta and Nick Barkla present A STEADY RAIN, by Keith Huff, in association with Red Line Productions, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Woolloomooloo.  22 September – 17 October. A STEADY RAIN (2007), by Keith Huff, is a cop show, a vivid law and order episode of a grimy underbelly intensity, looking at two Chicago men-in-blue, two schoolboy, neighbourhood friends, partnered to patrol their cities’ streets for the protection of their citizenry. It examines two men, two bonded ‘bros’, under the relentless pressure of the ‘job’ they do, who over time have shifted the goal posts of their integrity, both…

Carriageworks and Ozasia Festival present, SUPERPOSITION, by Ryoji Ikeda, at Carriageworks, Redfern, 23 -26 September, 2015. Lisa Havilah, Director of Carriageworks, has made a commitment to the work of Ryoji Ikeda, SUPERPOSITION being the third work that Carriageworks has presented of the Japanese Sound Artist: test pattern no [5] and concert datamatics [VER 2.0] in 2013. Some of us know his work with the performance collective, Dumb Type – they performed in the Melbourne Arts Festival in 2005. This work incorporates a large computer-generated dynamic of sound and light with two performers: Stephane Garin, Amelie Grould. From the program notes…

  Sydney Fringe Festival present SLUT, by Patricia Cornelius, at the New Theatre, Newtown. SLUT, by Patricia Cornelius won the 2009 Awgie Young Audience Award and the 2009 Richard Wherrett Award. It is in a 35 minute ‘story-theatre’ form and is told, mostly directly to us, by a group of young girls from primary school through to adolescence and young adulthood, as they tell us of the life journey of one of their peers, Lolita, who sexually matures very early, and becomes the repository of much victimisation, from all areas of her world: the men about her, and more crucially…