Category: Nick Wales

Sydney Festival 2010 present HAPPY AS LARRY, Shaun Parker & Company at the Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney. Like, but, unlike Michael Keegan-Dolan of Fabulous Beast who brought us GISELLE, Shaun Parker is credited as Director (as is Mr Keegan-Dolan) and then, Choreographer (not claimed by Keegan-Dolan). However it seemed to me that both these artists begin their work in a similar way. Select collaborators and from their uniqueness, their (gifts) develop a work from their range of possibilities and skills, predicated by the Director’s idea or “dream”. In the case of Mr Keegan-Dolan, this Festival, Giselle; in the case…

“In an exclusive boy’s boarding school, where students are forbidden to read Romeo and Juliet, four students put on a secret production of the play which brings violence, betrayal, lust, love and mortality into their own lives.” This is an all male Romeo and Juliet set in this particular location to capture the sense of “sexual hysteria” that Mr Calarco believes the Shakespeare play, is, in many ways about. The adapter Joe Calarco goes on to say in his notes to his text: “Put those boys in a school where Catholicism reigns, patriarchy rules, and where simply reading Shakespeare is…