Category: Max Lyandvert

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti The Ensemble Theatre presents, MARJORIE PRIME, by Jordan Harrison, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 15th June – 21st July. MARJORIE PRIME, is an American play, by Jordan Harrison, that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. The play is set in this mid-twenty-first century. Tess (Lucy Bell) is caring for her ageing and deteriorating mother Marjorie (Maggie Dence). She is beginning to experience a creeping dementia. Jon (Richard Sydenham), Tess’ husband, has organised from a Robot Company, a Prime. A Prime is a fully personalised life-look-alike. They have created for Marjorie, Walter Prime (Jake…

Says Bernard Shaw in his Preface to the play of SAINT JOAN: Joan of Arc, a village girl from Vosges, was born about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431; rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456; designated Venerable in 1904; declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonised in 1920. She is the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. Though a professed and most pious Catholic, and projector of a Crusade against the Husites, she was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She…

Sydney Theatre Company presents THE TESTAMENT OF MARY, by Colm Toibin, in the Wharf 1 Theatre, Walsh Bay, 13 January – 23 February. I trained as an actor and have spent a long time/career teaching actors, so, I am just saying, as someone who has a high regard for acting and actors: The last productions from the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) for their Sydney audience concluded five weeks ago (or so) with the closing of A FLEA IN HER EAR (9 actors), SPEED THE PLOUGH (3 actors) and THE WHARF REVUE (4 actors). In the mean time Christmas and New Year, and…

Photo by Amanda James Riversides Theatre presents, National Theatre of Parramatta, with SWALLOW, by Stef Smith, in the Lennox Theatre, Riversides Theatre, Parramatta. 21 – 30 April. SWALLOW, is a work by Scottish writer, Stef Smith. It was presented last year, 2015, at the Edinburgh Festival. It tells of three women: Rebecca (Megan Drury), responding (acting out) in a rage to the desertion by her boy friend to another woman; of Anna (Luisa Hastings Edge), an artist suffering from a breakdown depression who cannot leave her apartment and smashes it in pursuit of creativity; and of Sam (Valerie Berry), in…

Belvoir presents, THE WIZARD OF OZ, after L. Frank Baum, in the Belvoir St Upstairs Theatre, Surry Hills, May 2 – May 31. THE  WIZARD OF OZ, is Directed by Adena Jacobs, following on from her HEDDA GABLER ‘investigation – interrogation” last year for the Belvoir audience. This is not an adaption of the novel, or even of the famous film. From the program notes: Jacobs stark re-imagining of L. Frank Baum’s narrative masterpiece (1900) is an abstract theatrical poem about innocence, grief and the terror of growing up. The production is not a stage adaption of the novel, rather Jacobs…

Mophead Productions and Sydney Independent Theatre Company (SITCO) present THE GOD OF HELL, A play by Sam Shepard at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, Woolloomooloo. 26 August – 13 September THE GOD OF HELL is a work written by American, Sam Shepard, in 2004. The God of Hell, in Roman mythology is the ruler of the infernal regions, he is called Pluto. Pluto is also a famous Disney character. The irony of the significance of the twin ‘ownership’ appellation is fodder for Mr Shepard’s cri de coeur, in this play. Mr Shepard, along with writer’s such as Lanford Wilson (see BOOK…