Category: Luiz Pampolha

  Photo: The Call – Josh McConville   A GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY Sydney Premiere: THE CALL by Patricia Cornelius at the SBW Stables Theatre, Sydney. THE CALL by Patricia Cornelius, first produced by the Melbourne Workers Theatre and FULL TILT at the Fairfax Studio, Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne in late 2007, concerns principally the story of four young people, uninspired by their education who are “disgorged” into a series of jobs in their local community, that are available and maybe, for some, soul destroying: in a battery hen farm (chicken pluckers); an mdf board factory; a meat rendering plant. In…

  Small Things Productions in association with B Sharp presents LADYBIRD by Vassily Sigarev at the Downstairs Theatre. Vassily Sigarev a contemporary Russian writer has had three of his plays presented in Sydney: PLASTICINE (2000); BLACK MILK (2002) and now LADYBIRD (2004). Each of these plays deal with the desolation of parts of the Russian society in the era of Putin’s government. The lower depths of the very recent past time. Some commentators have, in an attempt to define Mr Sigarev’s niche, suggested him as the contemporary Gorky or Dostoyevsky. This may be somewhat premature. Certainly in the “world“ of…

Sydney Theatre Company and Griffin Theatre Company present CONCUSSION by Ross Mueller at Wharf 2 Theatre, Sydney.   CONCUSSION IS A VERY GOOD PLAY. It seemed to me to be a play about the World Concussed. We are shown six characters, some of them functioning in areas of social responsibility that were once (and maybe still are) Pillars of the Community: Doctor, Police Officer (detective), and then two more modern “pillars”: marketing consultants, a spin doctor and, sadly, a young representative of the future, “a male potential dropout.” This is a play where people have been given, in our present…

  Sydney Theatre Company and The Sydney Morning Herald present THE REMOVALISTS by David Williamson at The Wharf Theatre. I remember the cultural frisson of the early 1970’s in Sydney. The whole social and political culture was bubbling with the positive possibility of change. Emblematically for me was the burgeoning Australian Theatre and television. For instance, Channel 10 had produced a soapie called NUMBER 96 and I was seeing my life reflected in lots of ways in the stories that the entertainment world was making available. Change was imminent in every way and in everyplace. John Bell, Ken Horler and…

  Sydney Theatre Company and Medina Apartment Hotels present RABBIT by Nina Raine at Wharf 1. This British play was written and first performed in London 2006 “for which Nina Raine won both London Standard and Critic’s Circle Awards for Most Promising Playwright”. Ms Raine recently expressed surprise that her “little” play has had such a big life. For it also has had a showing in an Off Broadway house in New York in 2007, and in New Zealand. The play is not really covering any new ground (What play can?) except it is covering a contemporary Generation Y in…

“Write what you know.” In almost every biography one has read about the great literary figures this “write what you know” is a constant mantra of advice. This is what Mr Murphy has gone on to do so well. Beginning with TROY’S HOUSE a “story of a group of teenagers at the end of their schooling”. STRANGERS IN BETWEEN about a young boy fleeing his home and attempting to discover who he might be in the alien world of a big city: Sydney’s King Cross, and confronting his relationship with his family through the demands of his brother. HOLDING THE…