Category: Belvoir St Upstairs Theatre

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, by Melissa Reeves, after Henrik Ibsen, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 7th October – 4th November. Melbourne writer, Melissa Reeves has adapted Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE. It has been transposed and adapted to contemporary Australian times: 2018. It is a very faithful set of adjustments and is essentially true to Ibsen’s content and spirit – both his politics and his humour. The original play concerns two siblings, one a Doctor and the other a Politician – he is the mayor of the…

  Belvoir presents a La Boite Theatre Company and Brisbane Festival production in association with Sydney Festival, PRIZE FIGHTER, by Future D. Fidel, in the Upstairs Theatre, at Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. 6-22 January. This Australian play, PRIZE FIGHTER, has been written by a refugee from the civil war torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Future D. Fidel. It is his first play. It was developed by the La Boîte Theatre Company in Brisbane. In the program notes Mr Fidel tells us, reminds some of us, that the mineral rich DRC has had a reported death toll of 5.4…

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, THE FAITH HEALER, by Brian Friel, in the Belvoir Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills, 26 October – 27 November. The lights faded to black. The play, THE FAITH HEALER, was finished. The stage lighting came back up and it was a kind of surprise, shock, wonder, when on the furniture-empty raised platform, surrounded by a panorama of painted tumultuous clouds, only three actors stood there to take the curtain call. Colin Friels, Alison Whyte and Pip Miller. They looked so few on that, what appeared to be now, very spare space. For in…

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir St Theatre, present KILL THE MESSENGER, by Nakkiah Lui, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 14 Feb – 8 March. This is a catch-up blog. KILL THE MESSENGER, is the second play presented by Belvoir St Theatre, by Nakkiah Lui. The first was, THIS HEAVEN, presented in 2013. This is a one act play played on a blank black-box stage (Set Design by Ralph Myers) with a bench along both side walls framing the space, lit with theatrical nous and flair by Kate Sfetkidis, making clear demarcations for narrative location, and Directed well, by…

The Belvoir production of Tennessee William’s THE GLASS MENAGERIE, is the third major production of that play that I have seen in the last four years. This production, unusual to the recent Belvoir general aesthetics – has stayed faithfully to the text as written, using even the American dialect. Eamon Flack, an Associate Director of the Belvoir, last year Directed ANGELS IN AMERICA and there, too, respected the writer’s work, and the audience’s intelligence, to the production’s and play’s ultimate great acclaim. This, THE GLASS MENAGERIE, is an Australian production of a great American classic, without re-writes (STRANGE INTERLUDE), or edits…

Belvoir presents, NORA, by Kit Brookman and Anne-Louise Sarks, after A DOLL’S HOUSE, by Henrik Ibsen, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. 13 August – 14 September. This is a new Australian work written, jointly, by Kit Brookman and Anne-Louise Sarks, after, or, seemingly, instigated by reflections on A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen. To diarise this new work, it might be more useful to ignore the Ibsen original (for a while), and just regard what we saw on stage. This is a two act play (with a 30 minute interval – to facilitate a scene change – modern…