Category: Nigel Levings

Sydney Theatre Company presents MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION by George Bernard Shaw In Wharf 1, Hickson Rd. MRS WARREN’S PROFESSION: A play that intelligently deals with contemporary issues around gender equalities and sex and money.That it was written almost 120 years ago and still is deeply applicable to the social agenda debate, tells us something of the sluggish cruelty of the human being in its capacity to affect proper change. Our embedded prejudices and habitual moral blindness’s, such obstacles to human rights! This play written in 1894 did not have it’s first unexpurgated licensed performance in Britain until over thirty years…

    Belvoir and Big hART present NAMATJIRA by Scott Rankin at the Belvoir St Theatre. Scott Rankin is both Writer and Co-Director (with Wayne Blair) of NAMATJIRA. He is also the Creative director of Big hART. Belvoir audiences had the experience of this company’s work in the 2008 Sydney Festival co-presentation of NGAPARTJI NGAPARTJI. James Waites in his program notes for this production tells us that “Big hART is an unusual company. It creates works across Australia, usually several projects in varying stages of development at the same time. It has a very flat structure, with a pool of…

  Queensland Theatre Company & State Theatre Company of South Australia present TOY SYMPHONY by Michael Gow at the Cremorne Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane. TOY SYMPHONY by Michael Gow, glows in my memory from the Belvoir, Company B, production under the direction of Neil Armfield and the luminous performance of Richard Roxburgh as Roland Henning in 2007. So, I was very excited to get to see the play again in a new production. This one under the direction of a relatively new, young director, of growing reputation: Geordie Brookman and with Chris Pitman, a, as before, relatively, young actor seen recently…

  Opera Australia present at the Opera Theatre, Sydney Opera House FIDELIO. Opera in two acts by Ludwig van Beethoven. Libretto by Joseph Sonnleithner and Georg Friedrich Treitschke, after Jean Nicholas Bouilly’s libretto Leonore ou L’amour conjugal. This is Beethoven’s only finished opera. Written during the dominance of Napoleon on the stage of international affairs it is in the tradition of what has been called the “rescue opera” which so the program notes tell us: “Broadly speaking ,these pieces tended to cultivate ‘realistic’ settings, with a recurrent theme of the heroic release of an innocent hero from unjust imprisonment –…

Makropulos. Greek. Secrets. Crete. “Vanitas… ashes and dust.” Lawyers. Intestate will. Prima Donna. Opera. Magic. Madness. Suicide. Sex. Beauty. Potion. Hieronymous!!! (What an excitingly thrilling name.) Eternal life. Mystery. Words that to me conjure melodrama. These were the promise of an exciting and intriguing night in the theatre and they all appear in THE MAKRPULOS SECRET by Janacek. I had never seen this Opera before. I went to a Dress rehearsal on Saturday and was so moved, excited that I went again on Opening night. This is a revival of Neil Armfield’s 1996 production. The Design is by Carl Friedrich…