Category: Marcus Graham

Photo by by Ellis Parrinder Belvoir presents HEDDA GABLER, adapted by Adena Jacobs, from the play by Henrik Ibsen, at Belvoir St Upstairs Theatre, 28 June – 3 August. Adena Jacobs has adapted and Directed Henrik Ibsen’s great play, HEDDA GABLER (1890), into an 85 minute imagining of actor Ash Flanders playing Hedda that had, some time in her preparation, planning, “suddenly” allowed her to perceive “the poetry of Ibsen’s play anew – the yearning of escape, the terror of difference, a person squeezing out of their environment, the paradox of freedom.” Ash Flanders is a Melbourne-based theatre-maker. In 2006 he…

  Photo by Brett Boardman Sydney Theatre Company and Qantas present NOISES OFF by Michael Frayn, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. NOISES OFF is an entirely delectable farce by Michael Frayn performed with hectic, high spirited impetuous ardour, and impeccable skills, by a deliciously drilled, hilarious team of actors/farceurs, under the assured guidance of Jonathan Biggins. Laughter can be, could be, the tonic de jour, you are seeking, to distract you, even momentarily, from the ‘farce’ of our present Australian political governings, parliaments, and the awful weighing-up of truly tense international political developments. If you need,…

Belvoir presents ANGELS IN AMERICA – A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Part One: Millennium Approaches. Part Two: Perestroika. At the Belvoir Upstairs Theatre, Surry Hills. ANGELS IN AMERICA – A Gay Fantasia on National Themes by Tony Kushner is an almost six hour play written in two separate parts: Part One: Millennium Approaches (1990); Part Two: Perestroika (1993). The Belvoir Theatre Company are presenting both parts of this play, directed by Eamon Flack. It is a truly marvelous experience. Both plays are simply, still, twenty years later, astounding writing. The company of actors (eight of them) are giving wonderful…

  Company B Belvoir presents THAT FACE by Polly Stenham at Belvoir St Theatre. One of the major centres for contemporary writing, “ a new writing powerhouse”, in the UK is the Royal Court. In all of its manifestations, it has been, for a very long time. My memory of my History of Theatre lectures, as a student, take me back to G.B. Shaw and Harley Granville Barker dreams of a National Theatre and this building. Certainly the John Osborne LOOK BACK IN ANGER ‘bomb’ resonated from there (1957) and changed what was, then, newly acceptable on our stages. From…

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).…

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………