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Ghosts

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir St Theatre presents, Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Eamon Flack, from a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund, in the Upstairs Theatre. 20 September – 22 October. Belvoir presents Henrik Ibsen’s play, GHOSTS, in an adaptation by the Director Eamon Flack. It is an agile and careful, faithfully respectful version (unlike his recent production of THE ROVER), in which the actors, so the program notes tell us, were as participatory in its final language choices, based on a literal version of the play by Charlotte Barslund, as was the Director/Adaptor. It is presented in a…

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Arms and the Man

Sydney Theatre Company presents ARMS AND THE MAN, by George Bernard Shaw in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, 13 September – 31st October, 2015. This is a catch-up diary entry for ARMS AND THE MAN. It was seen in September/October for goodness sake! I am always keen to see the work of G.B. Shaw on stage. I do count his work as some of my favourite: HEARTBREAK HOUSE, SAINT JOAN, MAN AND SUPERMAN, MAJOR BARBARA, PYGMALION, MISALLIANCE even THE DEVIL’S DISCIPLE, THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA, CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA, are want to see’s. Maybe even YOU NEVER CAN TELL…

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The Tempest

  Bell Shakespeare presents THE TEMPEST, by William Shakespeare, in the Playhouse Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House, 19 August -18 September, 2015. This production of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST (1611) from Bell Shakespeare, Directed by John Bell, is Mr Bell’s farewell production for the company he founded twenty-five years ago. Mr Bell has played the role of Prospero three times in his career and it is interesting to read in his Director’s Notes, in the program, his debunking of the notion that THE TEMPEST was Shakespeare’s last play and that it is a valediction, with Prospero as a self-portrait of…

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God of Carnage

Sydney Theatre Company & Goldman Sachs JBWere by arrangement with David Pugh & Dafydd Rogers present GOD OF CARNAGE by Yasmina Reza, translated by Christopher Hampton at the Drama Theatre at The Sydney Opera House. Yasmina Reza is a French playwright, a new first generation Frenchwoman, being the daughter of two Eastern European parents (Mother, Hungarian and Father an Iranian Jew, born in Moscow), a novelist and observer of contemporary life. (In 2006, Ms Reza was commissioned to follow Nicolas Sarkozy in a year long journey, and published in 2007 a book called DAWN, DUSK OR NIGHT about that invitation).…

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Pericles

Photo – Marcus Graham – Pericles   Bell Shakespeare present PERICLES in Association with TAIKOZ. The Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. Norrie Epstein in his book THE FRIENDLY SHAKESPEARE in his discussion of the Tragicomic Romances begins: “Fantastical, superficial, artificial, improbable, impressionistic, inferior, miraculous, boring – or the best: no one can agree on the merits of Shakespeare’s romances. The eminently reasonable Dr. Johnson dismissed them as foolish, and they are. But, in the words of the playwright Dennis Potter, they are “sweetly foolish”. With PERICLES, CYMBELINE, THE WINTER’S TALE, and THE TEMPEST we enter Shakespeare’s final period………

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Travesties

TRAVESTIES by Tom Stoppard was first presented in 1974 at the Aldwych Theatre in London for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Stoppard’s work was last seen in Sydney in the MTC’s production of ROCK ‘N’ ROLL at the Sydney Theatre as part of the STC season last year. TRAVESTIES is a relatively early play by Stoppard, who is regarded, by some, to be one of the great living playwrights. Each of his plays is highly anticipated and highly debated. Like most of Stoppard’s work this is “History rewritten as fiction (and) it is the motif of TRAVESTIES, a work that exploits…

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