Category: Brendan Cowell

  Photo by by Ellis Parrinder Belvoir presents, ONCE IN ROYAL DAVID’S CITY by Michael Gow, in the Upstairs Theatre, at the Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. ONCE IN ROYAL DAVID’S CITY by Michael Gow is having its world premiere at the Belvoir St Theatre. Upstairs, not Downstairs, for this new work. It is, indeed, a welcome experience to have a new Australian play without any of the obvious trappings, or artistic reputation, of past writers wreathing its conception and promise, on stage, at Belvoir (the usual ‘game’ is coming back, it seems, from what one has read, with the Simon…

  Sydney Theatre Company and UBS Investment Bank present TRUE WEST by Sam Shepard at Wharf 1. First, my prejudices: Sam Shepard is one of three of the great living American playwrights, in my estimation. Edward Albee the greatest and David Mamet, the other member of the trinity. TRUE WEST(198O) by Sam Shepard follows the family sagas of CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS (1976) and the Pulitzer prize winning BURIED CHILD (1979). It has been regarded as the final episode in a ‘family’ trilogy, although A LIE OF THE MIND (1987) seems, to me, a clincher to the Shepard family…

Photo: Toby Schmitz – Ruben Guthrie Company B present RUBEN GUTHRIE by Brendan Cowell at the Belvoir Theatre. Presented last year as part of the B Sharp Season Downstairs this play has had some re-working, new writing and some re-casting. Wayne Blair’s production has got deeper, darker and more pertinent. Alcoholism and addiction is the thematic subject. In my own neighbourhoods of suburban Sydney and the inner city, the cultural trauma of alcohol abuse, (binge drinking, just one of the symptoms) is almost unavoidable. The consequences both individually and in the wider community are ugly and on the edge of…

  Sydney Theatre Company and Medina Apartment Hotels present RABBIT by Nina Raine at Wharf 1. This British play was written and first performed in London 2006 “for which Nina Raine won both London Standard and Critic’s Circle Awards for Most Promising Playwright”. Ms Raine recently expressed surprise that her “little” play has had such a big life. For it also has had a showing in an Off Broadway house in New York in 2007, and in New Zealand. The play is not really covering any new ground (What play can?) except it is covering a contemporary Generation Y in…

There will be quite a disquisition to follow, so stirred am I. But for those with a short concentration span or otherwise let me be brief. (“Brevity is the soul of wit”.) This production of HAMLET is a failure. A failure on almost on all counts. *(Well, not quite all.) To quote a program note HAMLET “is arguably the greatest tragedy in the English language”, ”a masterpiece”. It maybe the pinnacle of English playwriting. It may be the greatest “poem” written in English. It presents for all the artists who collaborate on it, perhaps, the artistic equivalent of the feat…

A new play commissioned by Company B from Brendan Cowell after he won THE PHILIP PARSONS YOUNG PLAYWRIGHT’S AWARD in 2005 called RUBEN GUTHRIE, playing in the B Sharp Space Downstairs, is blessed. It is blessed with a clear unfussy staging by the director Wayne Blair; by the wonderful look through the work of Jacob Nash (Set and Costume) and the Lighting by Luiz Pampolha (the third design mentioned in this series of notices); and most fortunately by the terrific performance of Toby Schmitz. Here is a performance of such miraculous ease: intelligence, dexterously skillful voice and body work. His…