Category: Hazem Shammas

Belvoir presents ATLANTIS, by Lally Katz, in the Upstairs Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. November 1 – November 26. ATLANTIS is a new Australian play by Lally Katz. It is a heady hilarious piece of a type of magic realism. I loved it. The principal character in ATLANTIS is called Lally (played by Amber McMahon). The last time I met this ‘Lally’ was in Joe’s Pub, a Cabaret venue in the Public Theatre in New York, where she was played by the real Lally (Katz) in her monologue called: STORIES I WANT TO TELL YOU IN PERSON – she had already…

  Bell Shakespeare presents THE TEMPEST, by William Shakespeare, in the Playhouse Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, 19 August -18 September, 2015. This production of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST (1611) from Bell Shakespeare, Directed by John Bell, is Mr Bell’s farewell production for the company he founded twenty-five years ago. Mr Bell has played the role of Prospero three times in his career and it is interesting to read in his Director’s Notes, in the program, his debunking of the notion that THE TEMPEST was Shakespeare’s last play and that it is a valediction, with Prospero as a self-portrait of…

Urban Theatre Projects and Sydney Festival present, BANKSTOWN: LIVE. Urban Theatre Projects (UTP) is a theatre organisation that has been developing work – stories – from within a ‘community’, of a community, for the community, in Sydney’s south west for 30-years. BANKSTOWN: LIVE, is the latest project from this company. This work is the only event I attended, in the 2015 Sydney Festival. We caught the train to Bankstown from Bondi Junction, changing at Central, in the late afternoon, and then using our GPS on the phone, walked through Bankstown shopping, restaurant centre and out into the suburbs of Bankstown…

  Photo: The Call – Josh McConville   A GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY Sydney Premiere: THE CALL by Patricia Cornelius at the SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney. THE CALL by Patricia Cornelius, first produced by the Melbourne Workers Theatre and FULL TILT at the Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne in late 2007, concerns principally the story of four young people, uninspired by their education who are “disgorged” into a series of jobs in their local community, that are available and maybe, for some, soul destroying: in a battery hen farm (chicken pluckers); an mdf board factory; a meat rendering plant. In…

Company B’s presentation of ANTIGONE, a version of Sophocles’ play by Seamus Heaney, is a beautiful version which Heaney alternatively called THE BURIAL AT THEBES. Here at least is a young director that cares about the text and seems to respect what actors do. Alas, Chris Kohn, the director, along with his designer Dale Ferguson have made an error by setting this play in a rundown Community Hall on some undernourished housing estate. He immediately reduces the power of the piece. They dress the actors in down market costume, not clothing, so from the given visual circumstances I can’t match…