Category: Damien Strouthos

LIFE OF GALILEO, by Bertolt Brecht has been adapted by Tom Wright for this present Belvoir Theatre production. My introduction to the Galileo play was through the British translation into English by John Willlett. It was this that I first read as an acting student years ago, and re-read before seeing this production, along with the translation that Brecht had worked with the actor Charles Laughton that premiered in Los Angeles in 1947. Brecht had exiled himself from Nazi Germany with the rise to power of Adolph Hitler, and while in Switzerland began working on this play between 1937-39, it…

French Santa Productions present, A Double Bill: THE INTERVENTION, by Valentin Lang and GOOD, DIE YOUNG, by James Sweeny, at the Erskineville Town Hall. 25th – 29th September. THE INTERVENTION, by Valentin Lang and GOOD, DIE YOUNG, by James Sweeny, are two new Australian one act plays. They are part of the Sydney Fringe Festival. In THE INTERVENTION, three young people, a woman  (Mary) and two young men (Steve and Joe) are in a share house and have found their lives going nowhere and, maybe, are dangerously overwhelmed by a dependency on alcohol and recreational drugs. They try an intervention.…

Photo by Prudence Upton Bell Shakespeare present THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, by William Shakespeare, in the Playhouse Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. Until 26 November. I went to see this Bell Shakespeare production of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, Directed by Anne-Louise Sarks, on the favourable ‘word-of-mouth’ I had, mostly, received from friends, who, like me, had had a very dispiriting experience with their production of OTHELLO***, last year, and, of course, because of my continuing interest in this very vexing play. Vexing? Says Norrie Epstein in his book THE FRIENDLY SHAKESPEARE: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE  is a troubling play.…

  Bell Shakespeare presents THE TEMPEST, by William Shakespeare, in the Playhouse Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, 19 August -18 September, 2015. This production of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST (1611) from Bell Shakespeare, Directed by John Bell, is Mr Bell’s farewell production for the company he founded twenty-five years ago. Mr Bell has played the role of Prospero three times in his career and it is interesting to read in his Director’s Notes, in the program, his debunking of the notion that THE TEMPEST was Shakespeare’s last play and that it is a valediction, with Prospero as a self-portrait of…

  Tamarama Rock Surfers Theatre Company in association with Sydney Comedy Festival presents LENNY BRUCE: 13 DAZE UN-DUG IN SYDNEY 1962 by Benito Di Fonzo at the Bondi Pavilion, Bondi Beach. I was 14 when I read, nightly, about the ‘depravities’ of Lenny Bruce in the Daily Mirror (The Sun was the other nightly newspaper, but, by far the less sensational, and so, much less interesting and memorable – it does indicate my own Catholic/catholic attraction to sin, doesn’t it? ). I was 16, when similarly, I read, avidly, in the Daily Mirror, on the front pages, about the shocking…