Category: Nicholas Bell

  Melbourne Theatre Company presents RICHARD III by William Shakespeare at the Sumner Theatre, Melbourne. This is my third meeting with the Duke of Gloucester- Richard III in the last couple of years. Firstly, the extraordinary one hour ‘reduction’ created by Pamela Rabe and Benedict Andrews, to serve that Director’s particular agenda for his vision of the great cycle of the historic rivalry between the Houses of York and Lancaster in the Sydney Theatre Company’s THE WAR OF THE ROSES, based on Shakespeare’s eight plays, where The Duke was played as a petulant brat- “a monstrous clown” cavorting in a…

I have to declare that I have never been a fan of Moliere. Either the verse translations or just simply, perhaps, the plots and characters always kind of bored me. (The STC Bourgeois Gentleman, a year or so ago was so horrible that I had sworn never to go again to a Moliere play.) So I attended the MTC production, the other evening, with no expectations. However, I had a wonderfully delightful time. My fellow audience companions did as well. I feel that the director Peter Evans has such a secure hand on this work from all areas of his…

This is the seventh play of Tony McNamara that the Sydney Theatre Company has produced. It is a committed relationship. “So why a play about Catherine the Great? Injustice would be the main reason. Catherine the Great was in fact, really great, and yet she is remembered as ‘that Russian Queen who did it with a horse.’” Mr McNamara in his program notes tells us that was not true. He goes on to assure us that he is a writer and he “likes to make things up” and he wanted a story “that embodies the spirit of the person rather…