Category: Alex Berlage

I had just finished my schooling in a traditional Catholic school and was investigating what ‘real’ life was like outside the indoctrinations of that institution, at Teacher’s College and University. I was only 16 turning 17 but even then I had become a cinema addict – escaping real life?, how immaturely ironic, eh? – and although my breeding, of late, was mostly school holiday Disney or Jerry Lewis comedies (except, of course, the free-to-air television repertoire), I took myself off to one of the ‘risqué’ Cinema Art Houses (The Savoy?) I had read about in The Daily Mirror, in Sydney,…

GLORIA is a play by one of the rising ‘stars’ of playwriting in the United States: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. His writing has garnished many literature Nominations and Awards: WAR (2014), APPROPRIATE (2014), AN OCTOROON (2014), EVERYBODY (2017), GLORIA (2018). GLORIA, is set in a magazine office, where a group of aspiring young writers are working in jobs that are unexciting, perhaps even deadening: Ani (Annabel Harte), Miles (Justin Amankwah), Dean (Rowan Witt), Kendra (Michelle Ny), Lorin (Reza Momenzada) and Gloria (Georgina Symes). They fill out their day at their desks with their menial tasks, laced, some might say, enhanced, by bored…

Photo by Clare Hawley The Costi Siblings present, THE OVERCOAT – The Musical, based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol. Book and Lyrics, by Michael Costi. Music, by Rosemarie Costi. For the Belvoir 24A Program, in the Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 15 November – 1st December. THE OVERCOAT, is a new Australian work, a Musical, by Constantine, Michael and Rosemarie Costi, based on the Gogol short story of 1842. The literal translation used is by Alena Lodkina. Gogol seems to be the parent to a writer like Kafka and his more familiar concerns. In this version of the…

The Ensemble Theatre presents an Australian premiere of, UNQUALIFIED, by Genevieve Hegney and Catherine Moore, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 22 June – 21 July. UNQUALIIFED, a new Australian play nurtured and commissioned by the Ensemble Theatre, from two actors/writers. Joanne (Genevieve Hegney) has found her TV star husband is heading to Bankruptcy and Bali with his latest girlfriend. Enough is enough – this relationship MUST end. Felicity (Catherine Moore) has worked as a butcher in her father’s meat business and does not want to inherit it – she has secretly hated it. How can she tell her dearest, darling…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti The Ensemble Theatre presents, MARJORIE PRIME, by Jordan Harrison, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 15th June – 21st July. MARJORIE PRIME, is an American play, by Jordan Harrison, that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. The play is set in this mid-twenty-first century. Tess (Lucy Bell) is caring for her ageing and deteriorating mother Marjorie (Maggie Dence). She is beginning to experience a creeping dementia. Jon (Richard Sydenham), Tess’ husband, has organised from a Robot Company, a Prime. A Prime is a fully personalised life-look-alike. They have created for Marjorie, Walter Prime (Jake…

  Ensemble Theatre presents BUYER AND CELLAR, by Jonathan Tolins, at the Ensemble Theatre, Macdougall St. Kirribilli. 6 October – 12 November. BUYER AND CELLAR is a one man play by American Jonathan Tolins. It was inspired by the book published by Barbra Streisand: MY PASSION FOR DESIGN. Alex More is an out-of-work-actor in Los Angeles who accepts a job in the basement of a famous artist’s home, where there has been a curation of the objects of career and the wide-ranging interests of this star. Alex will take the daily care of them. He discovers that his employer is…