Category: Belvoir St

Photo by Clare Hawley The Costi Siblings present, THE OVERCOAT – The Musical, based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol. Book and Lyrics, by Michael Costi. Music, by Rosemarie Costi. For the Belvoir 24A Program, in the Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 15 November – 1st December. THE OVERCOAT, is a new Australian work, a Musical, by Constantine, Michael and Rosemarie Costi, based on the Gogol short story of 1842. The literal translation used is by Alena Lodkina. Gogol seems to be the parent to a writer like Kafka and his more familiar concerns. In this version of the…

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, THE SUGAR HOUSE, by Alana Valentine, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 5th May- 3rd June. THE SUGAR HOUSE, is a new Australian play, by Alana Valentine. Find the best ‘Lions’, give them good ‘meat’, and we will all have a great feast. The Lions = the Actors, the good meat = the play, the feast = the audience (participation). It seemed to me as this play gently unwound in a daring ‘stately’ tempo, reaching (and revealing) an ‘epic’, led confidently, by Director, Sarah Goodes, the best of actors, Kris McQuade, as…

Photo by Anna Kucera Belvoir presents, THE ROVER, by Aphra Behn, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. July 5 – 6 August. THE ROVER, is a play by Aphra Behn, written in 1677. It is part of the playwriting literature emanating from the Restoration of Charles II to the throne and power, after the Puritanical leadership of Oliver Cromwell as the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The play, in verse, is a swash-buckling exuberance of Carnival time in the city of Naples, invaded by some English sea-dog exiles, roving the Mediterranean, some 20 years…

Photo by by Brett Boardman Belvoir and State Theatre Company of South Australia present MORTIDO, by Angela Betzien, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills, 11 November – 17 December. MORTIDO, by Angela Betzien, is a new Australian play co-commissioned by Belvoir and Playwriting Australia and presented as a co-production by the State Theatre of South Australian and Belvoir. MORTIDO begins with a storytelling by Detective Grubbe, of a Mexican fable about a Madre – a mother, The Boy – her son, and an Old German. Of murder. Of drugs – cocaine. Of a magic potion of cinnamon, garlic, banana,…

Photo by by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, A CHRISTMAS CAROL, adapted by Benedict Hardie and Anne-Louise Sarks from the novel by Charles Dickens, in The Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 8 November – 24 December. In the United States, where I have spent many a Christmas, the two perennial theatre offers were the Tchaikovsky two-act ballet, THE NUTCRACKER, at the Opera House, and a play adaption of Charles Dickens’, A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I have seen several different versions of the Dickens novella staged, and the two at the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT), in San Francisco, umpteen times – it has…

Photo by Pia Johnson Belvoir presents OEDIPUS REX in the Downstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. 21 August – 21 September. It is over a month since I saw this “meditation on the myth of OEDIPUS REX.” We enter the theatre and look at a spare space with some plastic sheeting framed roughly in the back left hand corner to form a covered passage way. The lights black out and we submit to a long, extended silence. Somebody blows in my ear – undermining the artistic intent, perhaps, but taking advantage of the much publicised offer? The lights return and…