Category: Michael Hankin

We sit in the cavernous Bay 17 and face a huge black-curtained void. When the performance commences we are confronted, quite closely, with a suited figure, in a specific, intimate kind of light, in a wide-armed gesture standing on a raised, small mirrored-floor oblong. The figure (Luke Mullins), with a visible face-microphone assisting, begins in an intimate sotto voce (with pronounced sibilant ‘ss’s’), a 50 minute conversation with his ‘self’. This nameless figure reveals his job as that of a body double for a film actor, Kane – an actor of second/third tier suspense thrillers, adventures e.g. “Briefcase Bomb 2”…

Photo by Heidrun Lohr Monkey Baa presents, THE PEASANT PRINCE, by Eva Di Cesare, Sandie Eldridge and Tim McGarry, based on the children’s book, by Li Cunxin, illustrated by Anne Spudvilas, at the Lendlease Darling Quarter Theatre, Darling Harbour, 9-20 April. THE PEASANT PRINCE, is an adaptation, in book form of Li Cunxin’s MAO’S LAST DANCER, for children, and has served as the inspiration for the Monkey Baa Theatre Company to bring to life on the stage. It is a rudimentary ‘rags to riches’ story, of a kind of ‘fairytale’ journey of a young Chinese boy from a backwoods Chinese…

  Belvoir presents JASPER JONES. Based on the novel by Craig Silvey. Adapted by Kate Mulvaney. In the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 6 Jan – 7 Feb., 2016. JASPER JONES, was written by Craig Silvey, with a young adult readership in mind in 2009, and has garnered many prizes and become a popular book – even a studied school text. I was never a fan of the book, finding it a fairly ordinarily researched novel – it is set in a country town, Corrigan, in Western Australia during the period of the Vietnam war, the summer of 1965.…

The Sydney Theatre Company (STC) recently presented a play by Andrew Upton called THE PRESENT, which was an adaptation of an unwieldy text by Anton Chekhov known, mostly, under the title of PLATONOV (1881). It was never published, even read, until well after the death of its author (It was published posthumously in 1923). So, what PLATONOV, can be about, as we have, historically seen, can be very different, depending on the inclination of the Writer/Director. Anton Chekhov’s first published and produced play was IVANOV, in November, 1887. In 1884 Chekhov had graduated from Moscow University as a Doctor, the same…

Photo by Marnya Rothe The Seymour Centre and Sport for Jove present, OF MICE AND MEN, by John Steinbeck, at the Reginald Theatre, The Seymour Centre, Chippendale, July 14 – August 1. OF MICE AND MEN, is an adaptation for the theatre of a 1937 novella of the same name, both written by John Steinbeck. The original production won Best Play in 1938 from the New York Drama Critics Award, and since has been adapted many times for other mediums – radio, television, opera and twice for the cinema: 1939, with Burgess Meredith as George Milton, and Lon Chaney Jnr as…

Photo by Helen White Darlinghurst Theatre Co. presents, DEATHTRAP, by Ira Levin, at the Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst. 10 April – 10 May. On a Thursday night, after watching the anti-war, TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, at the movies, as a pre-ANZAC antidote to the coming weekend of commemoration inundation, I had an early dinner, and since I had a family obligation free night, thought: “Maybe I should go to the theatre?” What’s On? 1. ENDGAME, by Samuel Beckett. Mmmm? In my Oxford Dictionary of Plays, I remembered reading: “… Beckett succeeds in creating a beautifully written, tense drama in which almost nothing…