Category: Harry Greenwood

Part way through Act One of the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Tennessee Williams, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, Directed by Kip Williams (and it was probably only twenty minutes or so into the text), I knew that I was having an experience in the theatre that was what I recognise as an experience of Grand Theatre. Watching this production of Kip Williams was the equivalent to me of what I have often experienced in the three hour or more in a Wagner Opera experience – a “Grand Olde Opry” experience, one that through its writing and the endurance…

Sydney Theatre Company, presents CLOUD NINE, by Caryl Churchill, at Wharf 1, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay. 1 July – 12 August. Let us begin at the top. This is the BEST production I have seen at the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) for many a long year. Get your self a ticket ASAP. This production of CLOUD NINE, a play by Caryl Churchill, written in 1979, Directed for the STC by Kip Williams (their new Artistic Director), with Matthew Backer, Kate Box, Harry Greenwood, Anita Hegh, Josh McConville, Heather Mitchell and Anthony Taufa  – is an absolute “knock out”. To begin where…

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…

Belvoir and Stuck Pigs Squealing present BACK AT THE DOJO, by Lally Katz, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. 22 June – 17 July. BACK AT THE DOJO, is a new play by Lally Katz. It is as eccentric in its character population and in its structural worlds as any of her plays have been, but, for me, is the best play she has given us. Even better than that other old fashioned but rewarding concoction, NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, which we also saw at the Belvoir Theatre in August, 2011. Just like that play, BACK AT THE DOJO,…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents A Sydney Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre production, LOVE AND INFORMATION, by Caryl Churchill, in the Wharf 1 Theatre, Pier 4, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay, 9 July – 15 August. LOVE AND INFORMATION is a 2012 play by Caryl Churchill. Caryl Churchill is one of the most interesting contemporary playwrights and has always been a leader in investigating literary playwriting ‘form’ and unafraid to examine the social/political context of the world she lives in and writes for. Her provocative gaze came to blazing focus as far back as 1976 with her LIGHT SHINING IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE…

The Belvoir production of Tennessee William’s THE GLASS MENAGERIE, is the third major production of that play that I have seen in the last four years. This production, unusual to the recent Belvoir general aesthetics – has stayed faithfully to the text as written, using even the American dialect. Eamon Flack, an Associate Director of the Belvoir, last year Directed ANGELS IN AMERICA and there, too, respected the writer’s work, and the audience’s intelligence, to the production’s and play’s ultimate great acclaim. This, THE GLASS MENAGERIE, is an Australian production of a great American classic, without re-writes (STRANGE INTERLUDE), or edits…