Category: Catherine Davies

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…

Photo by Brett Boardman Sydney Theatre Company with Malthouse Theatre presents, GOING DOWN, by Michelle Lee, in Wharf 2, at the Sydney Theatre Company, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay. 23rd March – 5th May. GOING DOWN, by Michelle Lee, is a new Australian play. Last year, the Griffin Theatre presented her play, RICE. Natalie Yang (Catherine Davies), an Australian/Hmung Chinese, has written her first book, BANANA GIRL, a no-holds-bar sex memoir. No-one is really interested. On the other hand Lu Lu Jayadi (Jenny Wu), an Australian/Muslim from Indonesia, has just written a new book that garners the Miles Franklin Award – ‘(she)…

Photo by Brett Broardman Griffin Theatre Company presents, THE TURQUOISE ELEPHANT, by Stephen Carleton, in the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross, 14 October – 26 November. THE TURQUOISE ELEPHANT by Stephen Carleton, says the back of the Currency Press play/program publication, is a ‘shockingly black, black, black political farce’ about Climate Change, which won the 2015 Griffin Theatre Award. According to Yuval Noah Harai, the author of HOMO DEUS, Humankind has locked itself into a double race. We champion and feel compelled to speed up the pace of scientific progress and economic growth while also staying one leap ahead of…

Belvoir and Stuck Pigs Squealing present BACK AT THE DOJO, by Lally Katz, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. 22 June – 17 July. BACK AT THE DOJO, is a new play by Lally Katz. It is as eccentric in its character population and in its structural worlds as any of her plays have been, but, for me, is the best play she has given us. Even better than that other old fashioned but rewarding concoction, NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, which we also saw at the Belvoir Theatre in August, 2011. Just like that play, BACK AT THE DOJO,…

THE KISS directed by Susanna Dowling, is a staged reading of four short stories, unedited for the stage, by Guy De Maupassant, Peter Goldsworthy, Kate Chopin and Anton Chekhov. What all the stories have in common is the action of a kiss. “They (the writers) reveal a kiss to be a marker of something changing forever; a transgression; a boundary crossed; a door opened…. Each story has a strong sense of foreboding of what comes after the kiss – regret, compromise, disillusion, pain, a loss of innocence.” The four actors, Catherine Davies, Rita Kalnejais, Yalin Ozucelik and Steve Rodgers and…