Category: James Beach

Kurt Sneddon, Blueprint Studios. Reginald Season 2014. Slip of the Tongue presents EUROPE by Michael Gow, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, in Chippendale. 10 – 27 September. Michael Gow has written some 15 plays for the Australian repertoire and I believe he is one of the more interesting and consistent contributors to our performing arts culture. My favourites: THE KID (1983); AWAY (1986); EUROPE (1987); SWEET PHOEBE (1994); and TOY SYMPHONY (2007). This year Belvoir premiered his latest, ONCE IN ROYAL DAVID’S CITY. I confess, AWAY is one of my three top favourite (sentimental) Australian plays, alongside Ray…

  Darlinghurst Theatre Company & Blue-in De Face Productions Present AS BEES IN HONEY DROWN by Douglas Carter Beane, at the Darlinghurst Theatre. The first act of this American play introduces us to Evan Wyler who has just had his first novel published and in one of the trendy magazines has had a commercially salacious photographic portrait, and presumably article, declaring him the latest “HOT” writer to watch: for a possible dazzling future!! We next meet an audaciously named whirlwind of a promoter, Alexa Vere de Vere, who commissions Evan to write a “treatment” of her life for the Hollywood…

Remember Patty Hearst and her kidnapping. Now remember Paris Hilton. Now think Poster Girl: Mindy Xyloine and have her kidnapped by some hippie group to promote their demands for free organic vegetables mix in media news and a police force corrupted by drugs and sex, highlight the celebrity creative team around our kidnapped Girl and you have the ingredients for this satiric cartoon of aspects of our contemporary society. It is a very amusing context and the writer has an edge with one line quips that elicit some good laughs. This play was originally workshopped at the AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL PLAYWRIGHTS’…