Category: Hugo Weaving

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 and UBS presents, THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Tom Wright, at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Hickson Rd. Walsh Bay. 21 March – 28 April. THE RESISTIBLE OF ARTURO UI, a play by Bertolt Brecht, in a Translation by Tom Wright, with Hugo Weaving, and directed by Kip Williams, playing at the Roslyn Packer Theatre for the Sydney Theatre Company. Brecht at the rise of the Nazis, fled Weimar Germany and lived in Scandinavia. It was in Finland in 1941 he wrote THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI. He soon after found…

WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett is regarded as one of the most important plays of the last century. Here is a little history: Samuel Beckett was born in 1906, in Dublin. He was educated at Trinity in Dublin, majoring in French and Italian, graduating with a BA in 1927, and an MA in 1931. He taught English in Paris and became, intimately, acquainted with James Joyce and his circle, sometimes, even reading aloud for Joyce, as Joyce’s sight failed him. In 1938, he published a novel MURPHY (written in English). He stayed in Paris after war was declared in…

  Sydney Theatre Company and UBS Investment Bank present LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES by Christopher Hampton from the novel by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos at the Wharf 1 Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company. LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES was adapted by Christopher Hampton from the 1780, epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos, for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1985. A play about love and revenge. A play about betrayal and cruelty. In Sydney, the Nimrod Theatre Company produced this play at the Seymour Centre in 1987 with Hugo Weaving as Le Vicomte De Valmont and Angela Punch-McGregor as La Marquise de Merteuil. 25…

Ruminations: THE SEAGULL, UNCLE VANYA, THREE SISTERS and THE CHERRY ORCHARD, the four great plays of Anton Chekhov. THREE SISTERS is my favourite and the greatest in my estimation. UNCLE VANYA is the smaller gem and my next favoured. Both great, mostly, differing only, in the scale of their scenarios. What makes the works of Chekhov a favourite exploration for actors and audiences (especially, if you have the opportunity to see the works regularly, as in Europe, where they are a staple of the theatre ‘diet’) is the endless possibility of interpretation. The fine ambiguity of the Chekhovian text (I…