Category: Hugh O’Connor

The Ensemble Theatre presents, THE NORMAN CONQUESTS, Three Plays by Alan Ayckbourn, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 19th October – 12 January. THE NORMAN CONQUESTS, are three plays: TABLE MANNERS, LIVING TOGETHER and ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN, by Alan Ayckbourn, written in 1973. They are famously recognised as one of many masterpieces from this author who has written some 82 plays and is still writing. These three plays have the conceit of happening all at the same time, just in three different spaces. The first in the Dining Room. the second in the Living room, and the third in…

Photog by Blumenthal Photography Shalom and Moira Blumenthal Productions present, THE MAN IN THE ATTIC, by Timothy Daly, at the Eternity Theatre, Burton St. Darlinghurst. 4 – 22 July. THE MAN IN THE ATTIC, by Timothy Daly, is an Australian play having its Australian Premiere after showing in Europe, in Paris in 2012, in Avignon in 2013 and 2015, Italy in 2015 and Greece in 2017. The play won the Patrick White Playwrights Award in 2007. Based on a true story, The Wife (Danielle King) and The Husband (Gus Murray) rescue and hide The Jew (Barry French) in their attic…

Photo by Marnya Rothe Outhouse Theatre Company and Seymour Centre present, THE FLICK, by Annie Baker, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, City Rd. Chippendale. 5th – 21st April. THE FLICK, by Annie Baker, is a multi-award winning American play. It won the Pulitzer Prize for 2014. It is also a play that has divided the audience’s response between relish and rejection. The Flick is a run-down cinema that screens re-runs/revivals in Worcester, Massachusetts. It is practically the only cinema that projects film rather than digital in Massachusetts state. We meet its staff of three, over a summer…

Photo by by Brett Boardman Darlinghurst Theatre Company present, SILENT NIGHT, by Mary Rachel Brown, at the Eternity Playhouse, Burton St. Darlinghurst. 10 November – 10 December. SILENT NIGHT, is a new Australian play, by Mary Rachel Brown, Directed by Glynn Nicholas. In July, 2015, this Writer and Director brought us THE DAPTO CHASER, a modest comedy/drama about working class dreams/angst in the greyhound racing industry, that has had a life touring around the country. SILENT NIGHT, tells us of a working class family, the Lickfolds, living in North Ryde – a suburb of Sydney (the one I grew up in!)…

Photo by Prudence Upton Ensemble present NEVILLE’S ISLAND, by Tim Firth, at the Ensemble Theatre, McDougall St, Kirribilli. 29 June – 12 August. Four middle-aged men on a community/business bonding excursion are wrecked on the rocks of an island, are stranded and out of network contact. Each man with a hidden ‘psychic’ break lurking just below their consciousness, under the duress of this isolation and their relatively inept ability to adapt to the challenges, disintegrate into a bourgeois (and superficial) ‘Lord of the Flies’ scenario. The conceit of this work is that it is filtered through the ‘mask of comedy’ with…

Photo by Clare Hawley The Ensemble theatre presents, RELATIVELY SPEAKING, by Alan Ayckbourn, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli, 18 November – 14 January, 2017. RELATIVELY SPEAKING, by Alan Ayckbourn, was his first big commercial hit, in1967. It had a cast that included Michael Hordern, Celia Johnson and introduced Richard Briers to the London West End. The play, originally called MEETING MY FATHER, came out of the ‘revolutionary’ era of the English Swinging Sixties with all its entertainment taboo explorations into drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll, – think of films such as TOM JONES (1963), THE KNACK, AND HOW TO…