Category: Paul Charlier

PRIME FACIE, is a one hundred-minute, one person play, by Suzie Miller. It won the Griffin Award for Best Play in 2018. Tessa is a feisty young woman from a working class background who finds her talent in the practice of Law. In the journey of this play Tessa experiences what it is to be on both sides of the incidents of the court system. It becomes a devastating revelation. Suzie Miller is a writer who has practised in Law to subsidise her first love: writing. Many a writer, especially the Australian writer, with this country’s limited opportunities to be…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti Belvoir presents, THE DANCE OF DEATH, by August Strindberg, from a literal translation by May-Brit Akerholt, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St. Surry Hills. November 10 – December 23. Judy Davis, as Director, has devised with her company of actors: Giorgia Avery, Colin Friels, Pamela Rabe and Toby Schmitz, a production of August Strindberg’s THE DANCE OF DEATH, using a literal translation by May-Brit Akerholt. August Strindberg is a famous Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter. Most of the English speaking world is familiar with his playwriting, but in Sweden he is equally renowned for the…

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, THE FAITH HEALER, by Brian Friel, in the Belvoir Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills, 26 October – 27 November. The lights faded to black. The play, THE FAITH HEALER, was finished. The stage lighting came back up and it was a kind of surprise, shock, wonder, when on the furniture-empty raised platform, surrounded by a panorama of painted tumultuous clouds, only three actors stood there to take the curtain call. Colin Friels, Alison Whyte and Pip Miller. They looked so few on that, what appeared to be now, very spare space. For in…

Sydney Theatre Company presents ZEBRA by Ross Mueller at the Wharf 1, Hickson Road. The design for ZEBRA, a new play by Ross Mueller, has been created by David McKay whose background experience has been mainly in film production design. On stage is a meticulous re-creation of an American bar, THE BIG HOUSE, in some part of New York city. It is mostly convincing and the most amazing element is the window that looks out onto the outside entrance stairway to the bar, which has the most convincing winter outdoor, daylight lighting effect (Lighting Designer, Damien Cooper), aided with continuous,…

    SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY presents Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. I saw OUR TOWN in the highly celebrated off-Broadway production in New York earlier this year directed by David Cromer (closed September 12th after 566 performances – a record, at the 199 seat Barrow Street Theatre). A few years ago I saw a production by Lee Lewis at the NEW THEATRE . It has been a part of my consciousness from my early youth. So, sitting in the Drama Theatre the other night I wondered what would my experience be. The scale of…

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE by Tennessee Williams directed by Liv Ullmann and starring Cate Blanchett as Blanche DuBois has been the most highly anticipated theatre event of the year here in Sydney. After the Sydney season it travels internationally onto an American tour to Washington and Brooklyn (New York). On entering the theatre Liv Ullmann and her Set Designer (Ralph Myers) have made interesting choices for their production of the play. The set is thrust as far forward as is practicable to the front of the stage (it may have been for an acoustical solution to this notoriously difficult space,…