Category: Alan Flower

Photo by Phil Erbacher Darlinghurst Theatre Company presents, AN ACT OF GOD, by David Javerbaum, at the Eternity Playhouse, Burton St, Darlinghurst. 2nd February – 28 February. Our species has, over the ages, tried to make sense of the events that have impacted on its survival. With our evolving, developing imagination, us humans have tried to explain the ‘ups and downs’ of the life experience – floods, famine, feast etc – with the invention of forces, Gods, to take some of the explanatory responsibility. For us Westerners the Books of the Old Testament, handed down to us by our ancestors…

  Ensemble Theatre presents DREAM HOME written and directed by David Williamson, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. This is a catch-up post. I saw this production in early February. DREAM HOME, by David Williamson, is a new Australian play. What was interesting, when reading about this play and its conceptual inspiration, was that it appeared to be about the not uncommon problem of new home owners, who after purchasing and moving into what they believe to be a dream home, instead, find it a nightmare, surrounded by neighbours that can make living there a catastrophe, a hell. We all have…

    B Sharp presents FOOL FOR LOVE by Sam Shepard in the Belvoir St Downstairs Theatre. For me, Edward Albee, David Mamet and Sam Shepard are the three outstanding, living, American writers. There are others, but the recent contemporary past seems to place them in high regard nationally and internationally. Sam Shepard, oddly, though, seems to be relatively under represented in professional production here in Australia, and, again, relatively, exists as a ‘cult’ figure in the ‘underworld’ of Australian performance history rather than as an artist of the first rank. FOOL FOR LOVE has never been represented in the…

  Sydney Theatre Company and The Sydney Morning Herald present THE REMOVALISTS by David Williamson at The Wharf Theatre. I remember the cultural frisson of the early 1970’s in Sydney. The whole social and political culture was bubbling with the positive possibility of change. Emblematically for me was the burgeoning Australian Theatre and television. For instance, Channel 10 had produced a soapie called NUMBER 96 and I was seeing my life reflected in lots of ways in the stories that the entertainment world was making available. Change was imminent in every way and in everyplace. John Bell, Ken Horler and…