Category: Damien Cooper

Photo by by Heidrun Lohr BELVOIR presents PRIVATE LIVES by Noel Coward, in the Upstairs Theatre at Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. What a surprise (pleasant for some, or, otherwise, for others) to find at the Belvoir St Theatre that PRIVATE LIVES by Noel Coward was scheduled into their programming. It speaks volumes as to the essential old fashioned values and conservatism of the Company of Artists that ordain an important part of the opportunities we have when we attend the performing arts culture in Sydney. I appreciate their tendency, if not always the product. More cannily, it might be a hint at…

Helen Thomson and Julia Ohannessian in Sydney Theatre Company’s The Splinter. Photographer: Brett Boardman. Sydney Theatre Company presents THE SPLINTER by Hilary Bell at Wharf 1. (Hickson St.) THE SPLINTER concerns a Father (Erik Thomson) and a Mother (Helen Thomson) who after a nine month agony of the ‘missingness’ of their only child, a little girl, suddenly find her returned. There is no explanation, no restorative story to fill in the nine month gap – just the physical presence of the little girl. She cannot speak. She cannot tell of her nine month absence. She just is. Is present. Her presence becomes…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents UNDER MILK WOOD. A Play For Voices by Dylan Thomas at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. UNDER MILK WOOD by Dylan Thomas is A Play For Voices, commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (B.B.C.), broadcast in 1954 and staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1956 (later, that year at the New (now Albery) Theatre, London). A film was made in 1971 starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole – Screenplay by Andrew Sinclair. Dylan Thomas had died in 1953 aged 39. When I was studying at NIDA, whilst, with my class, performing the whole of…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents PYGMALION by George Bernard Shaw at the Sydney Theatre. What is best about this production of PYGMALION by George Bernard Shaw is the opportunity to hear and see this text by one of the great writer’s for the theatre. I believe it is the first time that I have seen or heard it on the stage. Read it, of course, many times and know the beautifully bowdlerised version of it called MY FAIR LADY both on stage and film. In this production by Peter Evans for the Sydney Theatre Company, a production conceived with an…

  Belvoir presents NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH by Lally Katz at the Belvoir St. Upstairs Theatre. NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH by Lally Katz, a new Australian play, bears a dedication in the printed text and program to Anna Bosnjak and Robyn Nevin. In Ms Katz’s notes to the program she tells us of her encounter with a neighbour, an Hungarian woman, and then of “The next two years (that she) spent constantly with Anna. Often seven days a week, all day and into the night we would talk. We shared everything together. She showed me her memories and the world. I asked her advice…

Sydney Theatre Company presents ZEBRA by Ross Mueller at the Wharf 1, Hickson Road. The design for ZEBRA, a new play by Ross Mueller, has been created by David McKay whose background experience has been mainly in film production design. On stage is a meticulous re-creation of an American bar, THE BIG HOUSE, in some part of New York city. It is mostly convincing and the most amazing element is the window that looks out onto the outside entrance stairway to the bar, which has the most convincing winter outdoor, daylight lighting effect (Lighting Designer, Damien Cooper), aided with continuous,…