Category: Brandon McClelland

PACKER AND SONS is a new Australian play by Tommy Murphy. It is a play that focuses on the men of the Packer dynasty. Sir Frank, Kerry, Clyde and James. We meet Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch – another Australian power merchant family. And wheeler-dealer Jodie Rich – a failed power interloper. No women appear in this two and a half hour saga – is it that their invisibility or silence is a tacit wink that they are consenting agents to the world about them? Silence is Consent? On a bare stage, Design, Set and Costume, by Romaine Harper, supported peripherally…

Photo by Noni Carroll National Theatre of Parramatta present, FLIGHT PATHS, by Julian Larnach, in the Lennox Theatre, at The Riverside Theatre, Parramatta. 16th March – 24th March. FLIGHT PATHS, is a new Australian play, by Julian Larnach. Two separate stories. One tells us of Emily (Airlie Dodds), a young woman, who goes to Africa as a volunteer to take part in the manual construction of a school for an Australian Humanitarian organisation that she has worked for and admires. She meets another, a jaded volunteer, Charlie (Aileen Huynh), and Adhama (Richie Morris), the leader of the tasks in Africa. The…

From the 1999 biography: Edward Albee – Singular Journey, by Mel Gussow: (the scene is] the living room of a house on the campus of a small New England college.” Act One: the Fun and Games begin. “Set in darkness. Crash against front door. MARTHA’s laughter heard. Front door opens, lights are switched on. MARTHA enters, followed by GEORGE.” Martha is “a large, boisterous woman, 52, looking somewhat younger. Ample, but not fleshy.” George, “her husband, 46. Thin; hair going gray. Uta Hagen, as Martha, delivered the first words of the play, “Jesus H. Christ,” followed by laughter from the…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti Sydney Theatre Company presents THE GOLDEN AGE, by Louis Nowra, at the Wharf 1 Thearte, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay.  19 Jan – 20 Feb. THE GOLDEN AGE, by Louis Nowra was published in 1985. The first production was given at the Playbox Theatre in Melbourne, Directed by Rex Cramphorn. I first saw the play in a NIDA production by Neil Armfield with Richard Roxburgh, as Francis – it was a truly memorable production. I have had, always, a ‘romance’ about the early work of Louis Nowra. In the late 1970’s a group of artists, including myself, had…

Photo by Tracey Schramm ATYP (Australian Theatre for Young People) and the State Library of New South Wales present, A TOWN NAMED WAR BOY, by Ross Mueller, in the auditorium at the State Library, Macquarie Street, 29 April – 9 May. A TOWN NAMED WAR BOY, is a new Australian play by Ross Mueller. Inspired by diaries of young World War 1 veterans, kept in the State Library of New South Wales’ collection, Mr Mueller has crafted a play inventing a counselling session between an ex-soldier and a psychiatrist, to facilitate a travel back to the events of recruitment, training…

M.ROCK is a new play by Lachlan Philpott. Commissioned by the Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) and co-presented by the Sydney Theatre Company. Mr Philpott is, in my experience, the most interesting of the ‘new’ contemporary Australian writers. For those of us who have closely followed Mr Philpott’s work, M.ROCK, is a very surprising and pleasing change of content and tone, from his other recent major works: COLDER (2007), SILENT DISCO (2009) and TRUCK STOP (2012). COLDER is a fierce experience of grief for an unaccounted loss of a son, and the ruins endured by family and friends as his memory,…