Category: Anna Lise Phillips

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)…

Photo: Brink Productions – When The Rain Stops Falling Sydney Theatre Company and Medina Apartment Hotels present BRINK PRODUCTIONS’: WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING by Andrew Bovell a collaboration with Hossein Valamanesh and Brink Productions. This is an outstanding theatrical experience. All the theatrical elements have been so entwined that every moment on stage looks as if it is meant to be there. It looks and feels like refinements of choice have gone on. There is no ‘accident’ on stage. All looks considered and thought through and has the air of absolute spontaneity. The work is powerfully integrated by all…

On the coldest night in Sydney this winter, so far, with rain sprinkling around me, after almost two weeks of every night out at some theatre event, I had an uninspiring dinner grabbed between work and the theatre and then walked to the SBW Stables Theatre, bought my ticket and then climbed the stairs into that relatively uncomfortable space. I had recently written a series of reviews which were never entirely happy about what I had experienced. Mostly, lately, had begun to be irritated about Directors (both young and mature) conceptualising a production of a play and relatively obliterating the…