Category: Andrew Bovell

ANTHEM, a work commissioned as part of the Melbourne Festival in 2019, represents the reunion of the writers of the 1998 play WHO’S AFRAID OF THE WORKING CLASS? to examine and tell us through story invention of the present state of the nation: Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves and Christos Tsiolkas are the word smiths, whilst Irine Vela provides the musical scoring. Getting together, they write in the program note: We sat around the table and thrashed out our ideas. We argued and yelled and laughed and when we got sick of the sound of our own voices we…

THINGS I KNOW TO BE TRUE, has gathered a critical and word-of-mouth reputation. Such, that I was urged to see the play. I did last Friday night. Afterwards, I was just kind of angry, angry that such a great piece of writing had been so bowdlerised in production. Andrew Bovell’s play, for me, Australia’s leading playwright, is a wonderfully perceptive and astringent overview of the Australian Family and the different readings a six unit family have in practising and understanding what Love is within the spread and influence of relentless Time. Dad, Bob (Tony Martin) and mum, Fran (Helen Thomson)…

New Theatre presents, WHEN THE RIAN STOPS FALLING, by Andrew Bovell, at the New Theatre, King St., Newtown. 17 March – 18 April, 2015. This production of Andrew Bovell’s WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING, at the New Theatre left me in a gratified mood of semi-euphoria. I saw the original Brink Theatre production in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, in 2009, and rated it has one of the great experiences of new Australian writing I had had for a long time. Seeing the New Theatre’s more modest production does not diminish that memory in any way, and…

Playwriting Australia in association with Carriageworks presents NATIONAL PLAY FESTIVAL at Carriageworks. As I had mentioned at the end of my last blog, Dear Diary: The National Play Festival. A four day festival: 12th-15th June. It began with a Keynote Address by Andrew Bovell entitled, HAROLD PINTER AT THE IVY. Here is a link to the speech and I thoroughly recommend that you read and/or watch it. Like the Harold Pinter Nobel Prize Lecture (2005), (which is also on google, and definitely worth knowing), Mr Bovell’s speech is an impassioned, and ethically argued provocation to all the writers, artists, of Australia.…

  Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney Festival and Allens present THE SECRET RIVER by Kate Grenville. An adaptation for the stage by Andrew Bovell at the Sydney Theatre. It is interesting that the lead credits for this production gives the novelist of THE SECRET RIVER (2005), Kate Grenville, that honour – the lead, precedence, and that the work by Andrew Bovell as the adaptor, for this the stage-version of THE SECRET RIVER, is placed secondarily. This is not the usual practice and I read this as verification of the almost universal admiration/affection that this novel and its related works – there…

Griffin Theatre   Presents SPEAKING IN TONGUES by Andrew Bovell at the SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney. SPEAKING IN TONGUES was first presented for the Griffin Theatre Company in 1996, directed by Ros Horin. The play became a success both nationally and internationally. Since that time the text was adapted for the screen as LANTANA and in 2001 won seven Australian Film Industry (AFI) Awards. This production by Sam Strong is a part of the Griffin’s 2011 season and part of a plan by that company to look back and revive plays from the past of the Australian repertoire. This production…