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A Flea in Her Ear

Sydney Theatre Company presents A FLEA IN HER EAR, by Georges Feydeau, in a new adaptation by Andrew Upton, in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, 31 October – 17 December. A FLEA IN HER EAR (La Puce a L’Oreille) was written by Georges Feydeau, in 1907. Feydeau is regarded as one of the greatest writers of the theatre form that we know as farce. Comedy is the hardest form of theatre to solve, I reckon, and farce is the most formidable. It requires a verbal precision that must be matched with an equally adept physical precision. It…

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Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is one of those famous plays by a now famous writer, Tom Stoppard, that every young, university actor wants to be in, or do a scene from. In the early nineteen sixties, having the idea that the King of England to whom Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in Shakespeare’s HAMLET, were dispatched, was probably King Lear, Tom Stoppard wrote, whilst working in West Berlin, with several other writers on a Ford Foundation Award (as “cultural window dressing” for the allies!) a one-act comedy in verse called tentatively, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN MEET KING LEAR. A seed had been…

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Cosi fan tutte

  Opera Australia presents Cosi fan tutte (the School for Lovers). Opera in Two Acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. English translation by Jeremy Sams. Cosi fan tutti (The School for Lovers) by Mozart and da Ponte, (English translation by Jeremy Sams) is Directed by Jim Sharman. From the erudite notes in the Opera Australia program by Antony Ernst (2009) “The operas written by Mozart to the libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte are usually regarded as the pinnacle of operatic achievement… Certainly The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni Figaro, and Cosi fan tutti are extraordinary… In…

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The Clockwork Forest

This is children’s theatre. Maybe I should write this is THEATRE, whether it be for children or us grown-ups. This production loves us and gives us something for the effort of joining them. We are important to their priorities of action. (Great artistic integrity is in play.) The audience at the large Sydney Theatre, was mostly youngsters and their parents. The response to the one hour and twenty minute play (no interval) was attentive, sharp and rapturous. What more could one want? The simple, clear uncluttered skill of the writing (Doug MacLeod) captured the young audience from the first moment.…

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