Category: Jack Finsterer

Griffin Theatre Company presents, DIVING FOR PEARLS, by Katherine Thomson, in the SBW Stables Theatre Kings, Cross. 8 September – 28 October. DIVING FOR PEARLS, is an Australian play by Katherine Thomson, first performed in 1991 – a play, then, some 26 years old. However, this production, Directed by, Darren Yap, gives this play an energy and clarity that makes it resonate and feel as if it were written today, in 2017. This is a state-of-the-nation play delivered with confidence by all concerned. A good play – vivid, individual characters in wonderfully observed scenes, with dialogue that crackles and caresses…

  Griffin Theatre Company presents, REPLAY, by Phillip Kavanagh, in the SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross, 2 April – 7 May. Memory. The tricks of memory. I have recollections of what I believe to be ‘turning points’/’defining moments’ in my life and each time I replay them, either, mentally or verbally, both in speech and writing, they subtly change – more or less. If that ‘point’/’moment’ was between two of us, or more, each of us remember it differently, if sometimes, not at all. It is the Rashomon Effect (the Kurosawa film) – where a victim is raped and it…

Photo by Heidrun Lohr Riverside Theatres presents A Riverside Production, SHELLSHOCK by Justin Fleming, at the Riverside Theatres, Parramatta, 30 July – 8 August. Shellshock is a new Australian work, by Justin Fleming, having its World Premiere at Parramatta. The play was commissioned by Riverside in 2013 to be part of the ANZAC Centenary in 2015. In the Writer’s notes in the program, Mr Fleming, tells us that it was the Director, Wayne Harrison, who gave him a snippet of fact to ignite the process (of writing): a soldier took home a baby tortoise from Gallipoli in 1915 and that tortoise…

On the coldest night in Sydney this winter, so far, with rain sprinkling around me, after almost two weeks of every night out at some theatre event, I had an uninspiring dinner grabbed between work and the theatre and then walked to the SBW Stables Theatre, bought my ticket and then climbed the stairs into that relatively uncomfortable space. I had recently written a series of reviews which were never entirely happy about what I had experienced. Mostly, lately, had begun to be irritated about Directors (both young and mature) conceptualising a production of a play and relatively obliterating the…