Category: Jacqueline McKenzie

  Sydney Theatre Company (STC) presents ORLANDO, from the novel by Virginia Woolf, adapted by Sarah Ruhl, in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House (SOH). 13 November – 15 December. ORLANDO by American writer Sarah Ruhl (2010), is based on the famous novel, ORLANDO, A Biography, by Virginia Woolf (1928), Directed by Sarah Goodes, Designed (Costumes and Set) by Renee Mulder, starring Jacqueline McKenzie, Louisa Hastings Edge and four men: Matthew Backer, John Gaden, Garth Holcombe and Anthony Taufa. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (1925), MRS DALLOWAY (1927), A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN (1929) and then ORLANDO (1928), four novels…

THE PRESENT, is an adaptation by Andrew Upton of the, Russian, Anton Chekhov play, PLATONOV. PLATONOV was a play found “among papers ‘accessioned to the Central State Literary Archive in 1920.’ from items found in a Moscow bank depositors safe. This box was that of M.P. Chekhov – Maria Pavlovna Chekhov’s safe deposit box. She, the fiercely devoted sister of Anton. In 1923, the Soviet literary scholar, Nikolai Belchikov, introduced and annotated the previously unpublished play by Anton Chekhov. There is no certainty about when the play was written, but it seems there is some plausibility given to the idea…

Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and Colonial Trust First State Global Asset Management presents, CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by Maxim Gorky, in a new version by Andrew Upton, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. 17 September – 18 October. Look. Dear Diary, I did not have a good time with this production of CHILDREN OF THE SUN, at the Drama Theatre. It seemed to me to be more a play adapted from a Feydeau classic, than a play by Gorky. I can’t decipher who is responsible, The Adaptor: Andrew Upton, or the Director, Kip Williams. The best things…

Dear Diary, Please view the Belvoir promotional clip, below, before you begin this ‘epic’ entry. (oh, Puleeease, even if it is tongue in cheek, it epitomises some of the attitude in approaching these works that give me an artist, even, moral, pause. Or, is it just my generational elderliness showing, here? I am just not hip.) CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF by Tennessee Williams (1955) is another production of a classic American work directed by Simon Stone for the Belvoir Theatre. STRANGE INTERLUDE by Eugene O’Neill and THE DEATH OF A SALESMAN by Arthur Miller were presented last year. Mr Williams…

  Sydney Theatre Company presents SEX WITH STRANGERS by Laura Eason at Wharf 1, Hickson Rd. SEX WITH STRANGERS is a contemporary, American, romantic comedy (rom-com) for two actors by Laura Eason. Olivia (Jacqueline McKenzie) is a 39 year old teacher, who once wrote a novel. The critical response and the public response to that novel was crucially poor. It scared her off that particular career path, although, when the play begins, she is wrestling with a draft of a new novel at a writer’s retreat (a luxury bed and breakfast) in a snow blizzard, in rural Michigan. A young…

  Sydney Theatre Company present: In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play by Sarah Ruhl, in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. “If Henrik Ibsen and Oscar Wilde had decided to collaborate on a post-modern drawing-room comedy, the hotsy-totsy twosome surely would have turned out something very much like Sarah Ruhl’s genuinely hysterical new work,” (Theatremania). This is a quote from the Sydney Theatre Company’s advertisement for the show. It is a delightfully pitched idea, and I tend to agree with it. Sarah Ruhl is one of the new American writers making a splash, through dint of…