Category: Eamon Farren

THE PRESENT, is an adaptation by Andrew Upton of the, Russian, Anton Chekhov play, PLATONOV. PLATONOV was a play found “among papers ‘accessioned to the Central State Literary Archive in 1920.’ from items found in a Moscow bank depositors safe. This box was that of M.P. Chekhov – Maria Pavlovna Chekhov’s safe deposit box. She, the fiercely devoted sister of Anton. In 1923, the Soviet literary scholar, Nikolai Belchikov, introduced and annotated the previously unpublished play by Anton Chekhov. There is no certainty about when the play was written, but it seems there is some plausibility given to the idea…

Sydney Theatre Company (STC), by special arrangement with Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles, presents the Co-World Production of SWITZERLAND, by Joanna Murray-Smith, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, 3 Nov – 20 Dec. SWITZERLAND is a new play by Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. It was originally commissioned by the Geffen Playhouse, in Los Angeles, and will be seen there in 2015. This production by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) is by special arrangement with that LA company. Ms Murray-Smith has had many of her plays performed around the world, and has been translated into dozens of languages, and…

Sydney Theatre Company (STC) presents MOJO by Jez Butterworth in the Wharf 1 Theatre, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay, 28th May-5th July. MOJO by Jez Butterworth, first presented at the Royal Court Theatre, in 1995, has had a recent revival at the Harold Pinter Theatre, in London’s West End. When first presented, the play was received as a high octane cocktail of testosterone – of equal combinations of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. It won some theatre prizes. Set in a seedy, struggling nightclub in the Soho sleaze of the late nineteen fifties, the overture to the ‘swinging London’ fame of yore,…

Sydney Theatre Company presents The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of ROMEO AND JULIET by William Shakespeare in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. Kip Williams, the Director of this production of ROMEO AND JULIET, tells us in his program note: … When I came to reread ROMEO AND JULIET with a mind to direct it, I was struck less by the differences between the Montagues and Capulets, and more by the similarities: excessive wealth, unchecked ego, dominant patriarchs, packs of arrogant young men. The ancient grudge between the families felt like it could easily be the kind…

Sydney Theatre Company presents MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION by George Bernard Shaw In Wharf 1, Hickson Rd. MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION: A play that intelligently deals with contemporary issues around gender equalities and sex and money.That it was written almost 120 years ago and still is deeply applicable to the social agenda debate, tells us something of the sluggish cruelty of the human being in its capacity to affect proper change. Our embedded prejudices and habitual moral blindness’s, such obstacles to human rights! This play written in 1894 did not have it’s first unexpurgated licensed performance in Britain until over thirty years…

  Belvoir produced BABYTEETH by Rita Kalnejais at the Belvoir St Theatre, Upstairs. BABYTEETH by Rita Kalnejais, is a contemporary story of a young fourteen year old girl in the last stages of dying from cancer and the repercussions on her close and extended ‘family’. In the very first scene Millla (Sara West), the girl, dies. The play then travels back in time to show us some of the events that lead to this ending at the beginning of the play. We see it again in dumb show, later. Since we know the ending, perhaps, we can watch the storytelling…