Category: Daryl Wallis

The Ensemble Theatre present CLYBOURNE PARK by Bruce Norris at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. Look, Edward Albee is my favourite living American writer, I want to see everything he has written. Now, next to him, Bruce Norris has become my next favourite, living American writer. More than Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Theresa Rebeck, Beth Henley, Suzan-Lori Parks. So do go to see this play at the Ensemble, if you can. I read, first, his family comedy, THE PAIN AND THE ITCH (2004) – flawed but arresting; then, PURPLE HEART (2002) – a brilliant play about the effect of war on…

Photo by Natalie Boog Ensemble Theatre presents NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH by Alan Ayckbourn at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirrribilli. Reading about Alan Ayckbourn there are some ‘claims’ that after Shakespeare, Mr Ayckbourn is the then next most performed playwright in the English speaking world. Mr Ayckbourn was born in 1939 and is still writing for the theatre and has now a list of 77 plays, the last being ARRIVALS AND DEPARTURES performed in August, 2013. It premiered in the theatre that has been the incubator of most of his work, the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough. Looking at some of his play titles,…

Siren Theatre Company presents PENELOPE by Enda Walsh at the Tap Gallery, Darlinghurst. Siren Theatre Company under the direction of Kate Gaul is presenting PENELOPE by Enda Walsh. In March, last year, Ms Gaul presented THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM at the Griffin Theatre , also by Mr Walsh, and I presume Ms Gaul is simply following the old adage that when you are onto a good thing stick to it. PENELOPE is another wonderful example of the Irish storytellers ability to spin the English language into fabulous concoctions of delight. This time Mr Walsh stretches into the world of Homer’s Odyssey…

  SIREN THEATRE CO presents AS YOU LIKE IT by William Shakespeare in Bay20 Carriageworks, Sydney. AS YOU LIKE IT begins at court where Dukes have usurped Dukes, brothers have fought brother, and daughters are separated from families and become ‘sisters’ to unite and run off into exile. All end in the Forest of Arden. This mythical version of Arden – “a sylvan sanatorium for the political exiled, the lovelorn, and assorted undesirables…it’s topography being a fantastical mixture of flora and fauna, including snakes, lions, and palm trees.” It is where magic and the balm of nature gives room for…

    MONKEY BAA in association with Siren Theatre Co present FOX, a new Australian opera for young people. Based on the classic picture book by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks at the Seymour Centre, Sydney. This is a 50 minute opera by Daryl Wallis based on the children’s picture book called FOX by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks. The opera is a solo score sung by a soprano, the Spirit (Sarah Jones). Accompanying the ‘song’ are three actors who through dance and puppetry enact the physical story telling. After a bushfire, an injured Magpie (Jane Phegan) befriends Dog (David…

Theatre Trailer by Preview Play Siren Theatre Co and MAKEbeLIVE productions present….. RICHARD III by William Shakespeare. Walking down towards us, his captive audience, both Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Thomas Campbell, one and the same person, comes to a halt in a spotlight, contemplates us and then begins “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York…” We listen and watch with anticipatory excitement and foreknowledge (most of us, of this play, this night) and accept the invitation to watch a most sensational story of treachery, and evil personified, unravel for our delight. We…