Category: Anna Gardiner

Photograph by Kate Williams RPG Productions in association with Hayes Theatre Company presents, BIG FISH – 12 Chairs Version: Book by John August, based on the novel by Daniel Wallace and The Columbia Motion Picture written by John August. Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa. At the Hayes Theatre, Greenknowe Ave, Darlinghurst. 18 April – 14 May. This version of the Broadway musical, BIG FISH is called the 12 Chair Version. The original production had, for instance, a cast of something like 45 performers. This version has only 12. It is an authenticated and approved version. At the performance I…

Photo by Robert Catto Stories Like These in association with bAKEHOUSE Theatre Company presents BLINK, by Phil Porter, at the Kings Cross Theatre (KXT), Kings Cross Hotel, 9 February – 4 March. BLINK, is a British play by Phil Porter first appearing in 2014. Sophie (Charlotte Hazzard) brought up by her single parent, father, on his death, inherits several apartments. She had lost her job on the grounds that she lacked ‘visibility’ in the office. The inheritance was a relieved happenstance for her. Jonah (James Raggatt) was brought up on a religious commune in Northern England, and is rather ‘unworldly’. On…

  Ensemble Theatre presents ODD MAN OUT, by David Williamson, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 19 January – 18 March. ODD MAN OUT, is a new Australian play, by David Williamson. The play explores a relationship between Ryan (Justin Stewart Cotta), a ‘numbers’ genius employed and paid well by a Big Bank for his skills, who suffers from an undiagnosed case of Aspergers’ Syndrome and Alice (Lisa Gormley) a 38 year old physical therapist counting down her fertility clock with some urgency. We watch Ryan and Alice meet on a bus (what he is doing on bus, with all his…

Photo by John Marmaras Red Line Productions present, LOOK BACK IN ANGER by John Osborne, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral St, Wooloomoolooo, 16 August – 10 September. Belvoir St Theatre season from 13 September – 17 September. Sixty years ago, in May 1956, LOOK BACK IN ANGER  by John Osborne, was presented by The English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre. It has been touted by many that it was the play that ‘revolutionised’ the English theatre scene of its time and was the major watershed for what followed. Contextually, along with the usual classic revivals, the contemporary…

  Ensemble Theatre presents BETRAYAL, by Harold Pinter, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 16 July – 20 August. BETRAYAL, by Harold Pinter was written in 1978, and belongs to his great middle period, and along with other works like NO MAN’S LAND (1975) and OLD TIMES , is often characterised as one of his ‘memory plays’. Pinter was given the Nobel prize for Literature in 2005. This play uses reverse chronology, and so the first scene of the play is the chronological end of the story, the last scene of the play is the first chronological event. It begins in a…

Photo by Ross Waldron Don’t Look Away in association with Red Line Productions present INNER VOICES, by Louis Nowra, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral, Wooloomooloo, 15 June – 9 July, 2016. INNER VOICES is one of Louis Nowra’s early plays (1977). It is a ‘speculation’ around the  determination of the Guards in organising the succession to the Russian throne. In 1764, Ivan, (Ivan VI),  a rival to Catherine the Great, has been locked as a child in a prison cell, and is, in this play, propelled to a position of Rule through the ambitions of some greedy power brokers,…