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The Faith Healer

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…

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Sydney Symphony: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

SYDNEY SYMPHONY 2009 Season. ENERGY AUSTRALIA MASTER SERIES: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM. Overture and incidental music for Shakespeare’s play by Felix Mendelssohn. Text abridged by Tim Carroll.   This concert is a celebration of “the opening of the concert season for 2009… the beginning of the formal relationship between Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Symphony” and the birth of Felix Mendelssohn, two hundred years ago, in 1809.   In the Introductory notes to the performance we are told “the program we’ve devised for tonight speaks to the power of music – not just its power to move our emotions and stimulate…

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The Vertical Hour

In February in Sydney the local scene reasserts itself after a Festival Season-the third Sydney Festival led by Fergus Linehan-this year lots of Circus, Dance, Contemporary Music and little challenge. So it was a pleasure to anticipate THE VERTICAL HOUR by David Hare. A Hare/Shavian challenge of Ideas and Character. The Sydney Theatre Company (now led by Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton) begins its 2008 Season with this. This play of ideas gives moderate pleasure – its arguments have been well covered in many other mediums (the play is 18 months old!!) so it is not full of confrontation or…

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