Performing Arts Reviews:
2008–2022

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra presents, DANCING WITH THE DEVIL, Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody, in the Concert Hall, at the Sydney Opera House, 12 August – 14 & 15 August, 2015. This concert given by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO), conducted by James Gaffigan, had the title: DANCING WITH THE DEVIL. The first offer was the Ballet music from Act III of Verdi’s MACBETH (c.1864). The witches of the opera conjure the imagery of the Devil and the sound composed for the French version of the opera was for the dance around the cauldron of spells. Almost twenty years after the original premiere…

II The New Theatre present THE WOMEN, by Clare Boothe Luce, at the New Theatre, King St, Newtown, 11 August – 12 September. THE WOMEN, by Clare Boothe Luce is a tart comic satire written in 1936. Its famous gimmick is that only women feature in the casting – in the original play some 130 roles – and is a play concerned with the indulged class of the Manhattan rich and their servants, in their homes/apartments/beauty parlours, and inevitably, in the capital city for divorce: Reno. The film, made in1939, Directed by George Cukor, is a comic classic stuffed with…

Opera Australia presents DON CARLOS. An Opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi,  Libretto by Joseph Mery and Camille du Locle, based on the dramatic poem Don Carlos, Infant von Spaniel by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1787) and on the play Phillipe II, roi d’Espagne by Eugene Cormon (1846). Libretto of the four-act version revised by Camille de Locle. Performed in the Joan Sutherland Theatre of the Sydney Opera House, July-August, 2015. Giuseppe Verdi’s DON CARLOS. It is a Grand Opera. It is not often performed. I first saw it, searching for new experiences, on screen at an Opera…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents A Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre production, LOVE AND INFORMATION, by Caryl Churchill, in the Wharf 1 Theatre, Pier 4, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay, 9 July – 15 August. LOVE AND INFORMATION is a 2012 play by Caryl Churchill. Caryl Churchill is one of the most interesting contemporary playwrights and has always been a leader in investigating literary playwriting ‘form’ and unafraid to examine the social/political context of the world she lives in and writes for. Her provocative gaze came to blazing focus as far back as 1976 with her LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE…

Photo by Brett Boardman Griffin Theatre Company presents The World Premiere of THE BLEEDING TREE, by Angus Cerini, in the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross, 31 July – 5 September. – With a bullet hole through your neck, numbskull of yours never looked so fine. – Rest in peace Daddy numbskull. – Ta ta Daddy ya sick bundle of shit. – Bye bye Daddy you misery heap of shit. […] – Girls, I think your father is dead. – I knocked his knees out. – I conked his head. – I shot that house-clown in the neck. So begins THE…

Photo by Heidrun Lohr Riverside Theatres presents A Riverside Production, SHELLSHOCK by Justin Fleming, at the Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, 30 July – 8 August. Shellshock is a new Australian work, by Justin Fleming, having its World Premiere at Parramatta. The play was commissioned by Riverside in 2013 to be part of the ANZAC Centenary in 2015. In the Writer’s notes in the program, Mr Fleming, tells us that it was the Director, Wayne Harrison, who gave him a snippet of fact to ignite the process (of writing): a soldier took home a baby tortoise from Gallipoli in 1915 and that tortoise…