Category: David Whitney

Photo by Phil Erbacher Ensemble Theatre presents, LUNA GALE, by Rebecca Gilman, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 7 September – 13 October. LUNA GALE, is an American play, by Rebecca Gilman, written in 2014. Luna Gale has been taken into custody for her own safety. She is the baby daughter of Karlie (Lucy Heffernan) and Peter (Jacob Warner). They are, unfortunately, crystal-methamphetamine addicts, and have been dangerously neglectful of the care of their child. Karlie’s mother, Cindy (Michelle Doake), a born again Christian, is given temporary care custody but seeks adoption status which Karlie fiercely argues against. It escalates into…

Says Bernard Shaw in his Preface to the play of SAINT JOAN: Joan of Arc, a village girl from Vosges, was born about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431; rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456; designated Venerable in 1904; declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonised in 1920. She is the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. Though a professed and most pious Catholic, and projector of a Crusade against the Husites, she was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She…

Photo by Clare Hawley The Ensemble theatre presents, RELATIVELY SPEAKING, by Alan Ayckbourn, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 18 November – 14 January, 2017. RELATIVELY SPEAKING, by Alan Ayckbourn, was his first big commercial hit, in1967. It had a cast that included Michael Hordern, Celia Johnson and introduced Richard Briers to the London West End. The play, originally called MEETING MY FATHER, came out of the ‘revolutionary’ era of the English Swinging Sixties with all its entertainment taboo explorations into drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll, – think of films such as TOM JONES (1963), THE KNACK, AND HOW TO…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti Bell Shakespeare presents HENRY 4 adapted by John Bell from William Shakespeare’s KING HENRY IV: PART ONE and KING HENRY IV; PART TWO, at the Drama Theatre, in the Sydney Opera House. John Bell has adapted the two History plays, HENRY IV Parts One (1596-97) and Two (1597-98) into a three-hour ten-minute journey. These two plays were written after HENRY VI, Parts One ((1590-91), Two (1590-91) and Three (1590-91); RICHARD III (1592); RICHARD II (1595-96) but, before Henry V (1599). All part of the chronicles dealing with The War of the Roses. The two parts of…

photo by Rush The Bell Shakespeare Company present THE DUCHESS OF MALFI in The Playhouse, at the Sydney Opera House. The Bell Shakespeare Company presents THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, the cast and collaborators handout and list in the actual program, announces. It is odd that those “announcements”, even the cover page of the actual program, does not register the actual writers’ names: Hugh Colman and Ailsa Piper. No mention of the writer of the original play is claimed or made in the advertising, either (although, the theatre program is an exemplar of historical research of background to the John Webster…