Category: Alice Babidge

  Sydney Theatre Company presents UNDER MILK WOOD. A Play For Voices by Dylan Thomas at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. UNDER MILK WOOD by Dylan Thomas is A Play For Voices, commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (B.B.C.), broadcast in 1954 and staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1956 (later, that year at the New (now Albery) Theatre, London). A film was made in 1971 starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole – Screenplay by Andrew Sinclair. Dylan Thomas had died in 1953 aged 39. When I was studying at NIDA, whilst, with my class, performing the whole of…

  Belvoir presents EVERY BREATH by Benedict Andrews in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir Theatre, Surry Hills. Dear Diary, EVERY BREATH: To summarise. I admired the actors and creative crew very much. I thought the play was poor. I thought it was hardly a second draft. I am stupefied that it is on the Belvoir stage at this stage of its development. I cannot admire the director’s efforts on and about this work. I am very, very upset for all those first play writers who don’t even get read let alone staged. Can I suggest to the Belvoir Artistic Team that…

  Belvoir produced BABYTEETH by Rita Kalnejais at the Belvoir St Theatre, Upstairs. BABYTEETH by Rita Kalnejais, is a contemporary story of a young fourteen year old girl in the last stages of dying from cancer and the repercussions on her close and extended ‘family’. In the very first scene Millla (Sara West), the girl, dies. The play then travels back in time to show us some of the events that lead to this ending at the beginning of the play. We see it again in dumb show, later. Since we know the ending, perhaps, we can watch the storytelling…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents GROSS UND KLEIN by Botho Strauss at the Sydney Theatre (BIG AND SMALL, English Text by Martin Crimp). GROSS UND KLEIN (Big and Small) by Botho Strauss premièred at the Schaubhne am, Halleschen Ufer, Berlin in December, 1978, directed by Peter Stein. In 1988 the Sydney Theatre Company presented BIG AND LITTLE under the guest direction of German, Harald Clemen, with Robyn Nevin in the lead role of Lotte (the play has also been produced at the National Institute of Dramatic Art). GROSS UND KLEIN directed by Benedict Andrews (replacing Luc Bondy) and starring Cate…

  Sydney Theatre Company and Commonwealth Bank present THE WHITE GUARD by Mikhail Bulgakov. In a new version by Andrew Upton at the Sydney Theatre. On a recent Wednesday morning on my way to the university after another job working in Surry Hills, I decided to get out of the bus and go to the Fox Precinct markets to but some flowers and some organic/gourmet food stuffs and browse. It struck me, on this early winter day, what a lucky life I led. That I could leave family at home in the morning and know, definitely, that in eight hours…

  Sydney Theatre Company and UBS Investment Bank present TRUE WEST by Sam Shepard at Wharf 1. First, my prejudices: Sam Shepard is one of three of the great living American playwrights, in my estimation. Edward Albee the greatest and David Mamet, the other member of the trinity. TRUE WEST(198O) by Sam Shepard follows the family sagas of CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS (1976) and the Pulitzer prize winning BURIED CHILD (1979). It has been regarded as the final episode in a ‘family’ trilogy, although A LIE OF THE MIND (1987) seems, to me, a clincher to the Shepard family…