Category: Elan Zavelsky

Photo by Brett Boardman Griffin Theatre Company presents The World Premiere of LADIES DAY, by Alana Valentine, in the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross. 5 Feb – 26 March. So, when LADIES DAY, by Alana Valentine, concluded the other evening, at the Griffin, my guest and I discussed: “What was the play about?” Says the Director, Darren Yap: LADIES DAY is an important, honest and confronting play. It’s not only an intelligent piece about people living on the margins who don’t often get a chance  to tell their stories, but it also hits you in the gut. For me the…

    Bell Shakespeare presents TWELFTH NIGHT by William Shakespeare in the Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House. TWELFTH NIGHT is the last of Shakespeare’s comedies and it precedes the appearance of HAMLET. In an essay by Stanley Wells on John Barton’s production of TWELFTH NIGHT – my first remembered experience of this play, a magical one at the old Theatre Royal, in tandem with Trevor Nunn’s THE WINTER’S TALE starring Judi Dench as Viola and Hermione/Perdita- (Manchester University press,1976): “HAMLET is one of the most controversial of Shakespeare’s plays. It has been endlessly discussed, and poses major interpretative problems.…

ORESTES 2.0 by Charles Mee. Presented by CRY HAVOC & GRIFFIN INDEPENDENT at the Griffin/Stables Theatre. In the experience of my American life, in the theatre (over there), three of the most challenging writers that I saw and were memorable (for one reason or another!) were works by Richard Foreman, Mac Wellman and Charles Mee. All three write in structures and forms that we, in Australia, hardly ever see explored by our own writers or on our own stages. Although, Richard Foreman has had several outings over the past few years in Sydney (including: my head is a sledgehammer; Now…

The Arabian Nights that I know from my childhood memories and also from my occasional foray into the ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (Five volumes long) that I have at home, begins with a betrayed husband, a cuckold, the King Shahrayar who in vengeful grief has his first wife beheaded, and then declares that from now on he would marry for one night only and the next morning would order the Vizier to have the Headsman cut off his new wife’s head. For a thousand nights he married and the next day each of the thousand wives would perish. Until…