Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

  Sydney Fringe Festival 2015 presents BRITANNIA WAVES THE RULES, by Gareth Farr, at the New Theatre, Newtown. BRITANNIA RULES THE WAVES by Gareth Farr was premiered at the Royal Exchange in Manchester in 2014, and is having its Australian premier with this production. A 90 minute ‘story-theatre’ exercise told directly to the audience, with some acted interludes with other characters, by a young Blackpool lad, Carl Jackson (Vincent Adriano), who to escape the boredom, “the shite” of his home town, follows up the invitation of a recruiting officer into the armed forces to see the world.  “We fight. We…

  The Kings Collective as part of Sydney Fringe Festival, 2015 presents THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA, by Anthony Neilson, in the Ambush Project Space, Level 3, Central Park, Broadway, 17 – 30 September. THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISSOCIA, the play by English writer, Anthony Neilson has been seen in Sydney, previously in 2009, given by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC). This is a wonderful play, the First Act taking us on a journey with Lisa Jones, who is in search of one lost hour that has tipped the balance of her life, into the land of Dissocia. The Second…

Sydney Fringe Festival and Spooky Duck Productions present KINSKI AND I, Devised by CJ Johnson, at the 505@5 Eliza Street, Newtown Pop-up Theatre, 16 September – 27 September. KINSKI AND I, is a theatre work Devised and performed by CJ Johnson, Directed by Michael Pigott. Mr Johnson is a Film Critic and reveals, here, with this work, a Fan-tastic admiration for the actor Klaus Kinski – ‘one of the great actors of the cinema’, he says  – particularly in the films he made with Werner Herzog: AGUIRRE,THE WRATH OF GOD (1972), NOSFERATU (1979), WOYZEK (1979), FITZCARRALDO (1982) and COBRA VERDE…

  A Late Night Show, presented by Red Line Productions, INFINITY TASTER, by Rowan Davie, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral st. Woollooomooloo, 15 Sept – 19 Sept. Red Line and the Old Fitz Theatre has instigated a season of late night shows, after the main event, over the past months. We have seen a variety of work, from the well honed work of established writers in the One Act play tradition: DOLORES, by Edward Allen Baker; BULL, by Mike Bartlett; through to new work from monologists, to new multi-cast plays. INFINITY TASTER, by Rowan Davie, is a new Australian one…

Photography by Brett Boardman Stories Like These and Griffin Independent present the World Premiere of MINUSONESISTER, by Anna Barnes, at the Stables SBW Theatre, Kings Cross, 9 September – 3 October. MINUSONESISTER is the Sydney Theatre Company’s (STC) Patrick White Playwright’s Award of 2013, by Anna Barnes. The action of the play is set in a contemporary, salubrious household of an Australian city, with a set of siblings – three sisters and brother – struggling, inside a wrapped crime scene room, to make sense of the consequences of terrible family/domestic violence, that has escalated into a series of bloody revenge…

Photo by Robert Catto Darlinghurst Theatre Company present RIDE and FOURPLAY by Jane Bodie, at the Eternity Playhouse, Burton St, Darlinghurst, 4 September – 4 October. RIDE and FOURPLAY are two early works from Jane Bodie. Both are lengthy one act plays. The evening is three hours long. It didn’t feel like it on the night I attended. RIDE (2001), is a two-handed journey as two ‘moderns’ wake up in a bed not remembering how they got there or what subsequently happened. In three scenes, over the course of a wet summer’s day, the two of them interrogate each other, finding…