Category: Andrea Demetriades

    Bell Shakespeare presents TWELFTH NIGHT by William Shakespeare in the Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House. TWELFTH NIGHT is the last of Shakespeare’s comedies and it precedes the appearance of HAMLET. In an essay by Stanley Wells on John Barton’s production of TWELFTH NIGHT – my first remembered experience of this play, a magical one at the old Theatre Royal, in tandem with Trevor Nunn’s THE WINTER’S TALE starring Judi Dench as Viola and Hermione/Perdita- (Manchester University press,1976): “HAMLET is one of the most controversial of Shakespeare’s plays. It has been endlessly discussed, and poses major interpretative problems.…

ORESTES 2.0 by Charles Mee. Presented by CRY HAVOC & GRIFFIN INDEPENDENT at the Griffin/Stables Theatre. In the experience of my American life, in the theatre (over there), three of the most challenging writers that I saw and were memorable (for one reason or another!) were works by Richard Foreman, Mac Wellman and Charles Mee. All three write in structures and forms that we, in Australia, hardly ever see explored by our own writers or on our own stages. Although, Richard Foreman has had several outings over the past few years in Sydney (including: my head is a sledgehammer; Now…

Photo – Marcus Graham – Pericles   Bell Shakespeare present PERICLES in Association with TAIKOZ. The Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. Norrie Epstein in his book THE FRIENDLY SHAKESPEARE in his discussion of the Tragicomic Romances begins: “Fantastical, superficial, artificial, improbable, impressionistic, inferior, miraculous, boring – or the best: no one can agree on the merits of Shakespeare’s romances. The eminently reasonable Dr. Johnson dismissed them as foolish, and they are. But, in the words of the playwright Dennis Potter, they are “sweetly foolish”. With PERICLES, CYMBELINE, THE WINTER’S TALE, and THE TEMPEST we enter Shakespeare’s final period………