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All My Sleep and Waking

Apocalypse Theatre Company presents ALL MY SLEEP AND WAKING, by Mary Rachel Brown, at the Old 505, Eliza Street, Newtown. 28 November – 22 December. ALL MY SLEEP AND WAKING, was an early play (first?), written by Mary Rachel Brown, first performed in 2002 in a 55 minute one act version, that has had recent and further development with Mentor/Director, Dino Dimitriades, of the Apocalypse Theatre Company. Three siblings, Maria (Angela Bauer), Anne (Di Adams) and Peter (Richard Sydenham) await – with Anne’s son, Josh (Alex Beauman) – the passing of their father from a longterm illness – we never…

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The Taming of The Shrew

  Sport For Jove presents THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, by William Shakespeare, in the Riverside Theatre, Riverside, Parramatta. 5-7 May. A season at the Seymour Centre, follows on 19-28 May. THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is one of the plays of Shakespeare, that can find itself, often, the centre of deep contemporary cultural-political debate, controversy. Says Norrie Epstein in his THE FRIENDLY SHAKESPEARE [1]: The play’s misogyny, whether Shakespeare’s or Petruchio’s (In the original play the Katherine-Petruchio story is the illusion created for a drunken character called Sly, by some callous young noblemen), has caused something of a problem…

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Edward II

Photography by Marnya Rothe The Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove present, EDWARD II written by Christopher Marlowe, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre. Christopher (Kit) Marlowe born in 1564, died in 1593. Queen Elizabeth I herself was said to have pronounced Christopher Marlowe’s death sentence (‘prosecute it to the full’) at court. He died from a puncture wound above the eye at the house of a widow in Deptford. The Queen’s Coroner attributed the killing to a quarrel over ‘the reckoning’, a bill for food and drink, but many have long suspected that the murder had other…

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The Lunch Hour

  Siren Theatre Co in partnership with The Darlinghurst Theatre Company presents THE LUNCH HOUR by Chris Aronsten at the Darlinghurst Theatre. THE LUNCH HOUR by Chris Aronsten is a wildly ambitious play. It begins as pell mell farce with characters, initially perceived as possible satiric types that move into the second act of the work to a dark psychological critique of a most challenging kind, to finally launch into one of the bleakest music theatre climaxes that I have seen since the last production of Stephen Sondheim’s ASSASSINS. Six struggling artists who in the languors of their careers work…

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The Table of Knowledge

The Table of Knowledge 2011 from version 1.0 on Vimeo. A version 1.0 and Merrigong Company co-production presented by Carriageworks THE TABLE OF KNOWLEDGE. THE TABLE OF KNOWLEDGE by version 1.0 is the latest production from this company. It works, on its usual terms, very, very well. It deals with the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) investigation in February 2008, into the business of development at Wollongong Council. This work has been co-produced by a Wollongong theatre company: Merrigong and premiered at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre in Wollongong in September of 2011. The season was extended down there and…

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Hamlet

  HARLOS PRODUCTIONS present HAMLET at the Bondi Pavilion. HAMLET directed by David Ritchie for Harlos Productions has a small company of 8 actors playing, in a well edited text, a number of responsibilities. There are two scheduled actors to play Hamlet; Angela Bauer and Damien Ryan. This is a very lucid and slow unwinding of the text. It’s energy is gently expositional and ideal for students studying the play. I attended a performance of Damien Ryan as Hamlet. The performance is intelligent and clear. Re-assuring. There is great personable charm but it is a little too “held”, controlled, and…

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