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Measure for Measure, and The Servant of Two Masters

With this year adaptations of Shakespeare’s MEASURE FOR MEASURE and Carlo Goldoni’s THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS, Sport For Jove (SFJ) present their ninth summer season at Bella Vista Farm, and in Leura, in the Everglades Gardens. Lizzie Schebesta, the Director of MEASURE FOR MEASURE, declares in her program notes to be ‘an unashamedly feminist theatre maker and will frack my way into a play to bring out its female voice.’ So with excision of text – even a whole sub-plot and several characters – and much re-writing, with a Design concept (Sallyanne Facer) that liberally borrows from contemporary television…

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No End of Blame

Photo by Kate Williams Sport For Jove Theatre Co. and Seymour Centre present, NO END OF BLAME, by Howard Barker, in the Reginald Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, Chippendale. October 12 – October 28. Sport For Jove have taken on British playwright, Howard Barker’s 1981 play NO END OF BLAME: Scenes of Overcoming. Ideas plus entertainment can equal art. Howard Barker writes plays that are robustly muscular in content (ideas!) and language usage (literate!). ‘Challenging’, might be a word to describe them. He calls his great catalogue of work: The Theatre of Catastrophe and since 1988 has run his own company:…

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Look Back In Anger

Photo by John Marmaras Red Line Productions present, LOOK BACK IN ANGER by John Osborne, at the Old Fitz Theatre, Cathedral St, Wooloomoolooo, 16 August – 10 September. Belvoir St Theatre season from 13 September – 17 September. Sixty years ago, in May 1956, LOOK BACK IN ANGER  by John Osborne, was presented by The English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre. It has been touted by many that it was the play that ‘revolutionised’ the English theatre scene of its time and was the major watershed for what followed. Contextually, along with the usual classic revivals, the contemporary…

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The Merchant of Venice

  The Seymour Centre and Sport For Jove present, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, by William Shakespeare, in the York Theatre, at the Seymour Centre, Chippendale. 22 May – 30 May. Sport For Jove present Shakespeare’s THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, at the Seymour Centre, Directed by Richard Cottrell. This play, once a popular choice, is rarely played, professionally, today in Australia – as with THE TAMING OF THE SHREW – and so I looked forward to this production with much curiosity. To prepare myself, I re-read the play, and pulled out of my book collection, John Gross’ SHYLOCK – Four Hundred…

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The Crucible

From THE CRUCIBLE: But you must understand, Sir, that a man is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between. This is a sharp time, a precise time – we live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world. Now, by God’s grace, the shining sun is up, and them that fear not the light will surely praise it. I hope that you be one of those. Act Three. Danforth Sitting in the old wooden ‘barn’, one of the heritage buildings, situated on the…

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Mrs Warren’s Profession

Sydney Theatre Company presents MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION by George Bernard Shaw In Wharf 1, Hickson Rd. MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION: A play that intelligently deals with contemporary issues around gender equalities and sex and money.That it was written almost 120 years ago and still is deeply applicable to the social agenda debate, tells us something of the sluggish cruelty of the human being in its capacity to affect proper change. Our embedded prejudices and habitual moral blindness’s, such obstacles to human rights! This play written in 1894 did not have it’s first unexpurgated licensed performance in Britain until over thirty years…

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