Category: Ensemble

  Ensemble Theatre present David Williamson’s LET THE SUNSHINE at the Seymour Centre. Oh, what is all this guff about David Williamson and all the other contemporary playmakers etc? Horses for courses. Please!!! THE WAR OF THE ROSES written by Tom Wright and Benedict Andrews, THE WOMEN OF TROY also written by Tom Wright but with Barrie Kosky (and I presume the up-coming POPPEA by Barrie Kosky from the Monteverdi Opera, Poppea) are worthwhile contributions to the Australian theatre culture. And, I have to say, my very pleasant night at the Seymour Centre on Thursday night gave another worthwhile night…

  Ensemble Theatre present THE LITTLE DOG LAUGHED by Douglas Carter Beane at the Ensemble Theatre. This is the second play by Douglas Carter Beane we have seen in Sydney this year. AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN was presented at the Darlinghurst Theatre as part of the background to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festivities in February. The principal characters in this play are also entangled with the plight of being homosexual and in the world, or edge of it, as a celebrity, and the difficulties that that fact may make for the individuals. The characters here include…

Arguably, five great classics of the repertory were promised this year in Sydney. The Bell Shakespeare presented HAMLET. The ANTIGONE at Belvoir. THE WOMEN OF TROY at the Sydney Theatre Company. The Ensemble Theatre as part of its celebratory 50th Anniversary Season offered DEATH OF A SALESMAN (Arthur Miller), and now the great German play Friedrich Schiller’s MARY STUART in a new version by Peter Oswald. This acclaimed version was premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in 2005. Peter Oswald is a verse dramatist himself and has written this new version in a mixture of prose and poetry. MARY STUART is…

This play was first performed in 1949. A year after that premiere on Broadway Miller was asked to write a first anniversary item for the New York Times. Of many observations the last paragraph is worth noting: “So what is there to feel on this anniversary? Hope, for I know now that people want to listen. A little fear that they want to listen so badly. And an old insistence – sometimes difficult to summon, but there nonetheless – that we will find a way beyond fear of each other, beyond bellicosity, a way into our humanity.“ Last night in…