Category: John Howard

PACKER AND SONS is a new Australian play by Tommy Murphy. It is a play that focuses on the men of the Packer dynasty. Sir Frank, Kerry, Clyde and James. We meet Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch – another Australian power merchant family. And wheeler-dealer Jodie Rich – a failed power interloper. No women appear in this two and a half hour saga – is it that their invisibility or silence is a tacit wink that they are consenting agents to the world about them? Silence is Consent? On a bare stage, Design, Set and Costume, by Romaine Harper, supported peripherally…

Photo by Heidrun Lohr Ensemble Theatre presents, SORTING OUT RACHEL, by David Williamson, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 19 January – 17 March. SORTING OUT RACHEL, at the Ensemble Theatre, is the latest annual play and production from Australian playwright, David Williamson. We meet Bruce (John Howard), a self-confessed unscrupulous businessman – his latest foray is in the Aged Care sector, where money making rather than actual care is of the highest priority – and finds himself, boastfully, a $60 million dollar man. His wife Molly has recently passed away. The play begins in an outdoor restaurant location where Bruce…

MARK COLVIN’S KIDNEY, is a new Australian play by Tommy Murphy. There are some 28 characters. The play, however, is virtually a two-hander involving a true story concerning Mary-Ellen Field (Sarah Peirse) and Mark Colvin (John Howard). Elle MacPherson, an ex-pat Australian business woman, hires another ex-pat Australian, business advisor, Mary-Ellen Field, to sort out her business arrangements. Some time into their trusting relationship, some negative articles begin to appear in the press. Ms MacPherson, taking advice from other aides, suspects the ‘leaks’ for the said articles were coming from Ms Field. She is gradually removed and loses her job…

The Sydney Theatre Company (STC) recently presented a play by Andrew Upton called THE PRESENT, which was an adaptation of an unwieldy text by Anton Chekhov known, mostly, under the title of PLATONOV (1881). It was never published, even read, until well after the death of its author (It was published posthumously in 1923). So, what PLATONOV, can be about, as we have, historically seen, can be very different, depending on the inclination of the Writer/Director. Anton Chekhov’s first published and produced play was IVANOV, in November, 1887. In 1884 Chekhov had graduated from Moscow University as a Doctor, the same…

  Belvoir presents EVERY BREATH by Benedict Andrews in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir Theatre, Surry Hills. Dear Diary, EVERY BREATH: To summarise. I admired the actors and creative crew very much. I thought the play was poor. I thought it was hardly a second draft. I am stupefied that it is on the Belvoir stage at this stage of its development. I cannot admire the director’s efforts on and about this work. I am very, very upset for all those first play writers who don’t even get read let alone staged. Can I suggest to the Belvoir Artistic Team that…