Category: Renee Mulder

  Sydney Theatre Company present, CHIMERICA, by Lucy Kirkwood, in the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Walsh Bay. 28 February – 1 April. CHIMERICA, is a three hour (plus interval) play of epic scale, written by Lucy Kirkwood, that premiered at the Almeida Theatre, in London, in 2013. The play is epic in length, epic in production values, epic in cast, and best of all, epic in ideas. On a virtual empty stage, with the action of a revolve stage, the production swirls into that space creating locations for some 39 scenes, that are, at different times, naturalistic, emblematic (Brechtian?), surreal. The…

  Sydney Theatre Company (STC) presents ORLANDO, from the novel by Virginia Woolf, adapted by Sarah Ruhl, in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House (SOH). 13 November – 15 December. ORLANDO by American writer Sarah Ruhl (2010), is based on the famous novel, ORLANDO, A Biography, by Virginia Woolf (1928), Directed by Sarah Goodes, Designed (Costumes and Set) by Renee Mulder, starring Jacqueline McKenzie, Louisa Hastings Edge and four men: Matthew Backer, John Gaden, Garth Holcombe and Anthony Taufa. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE (1925), MRS DALLOWAY (1927), A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN (1929) and then ORLANDO (1928), four novels…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti Sydney Theatre Company and Allens present, BATTLE OF WATERLOO, by Kylie Coolwell, at Wharf 1, Sydney Theatre Company, Hickson Rd Walsh Bay. 5th June – 27th June. BATTLE OF WATERLOO, by Kylie Coolwell, is a new Australian play. This is the Indigenous play that I have been waiting for. Ms Coolwell has written a work from the heart of an urban Indigenous community, in the contemporary world of the housing commission buildings of Waterloo, not far from Redfern, set in the thrilling pulse of the everyday and centred on the robust life of an extended family.…

Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and Colonial Trust First State Global Asset Management presents, CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by Maxim Gorky, in a new version by Andrew Upton, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. 17 September – 18 October. Look. Dear Diary, I did not have a good time with this production of CHILDREN OF THE SUN, at the Drama Theatre. It seemed to me to be more a play adapted from a Feydeau classic, than a play by Gorky. I can’t decipher who is responsible, The Adaptor: Andrew Upton, or the Director, Kip Williams. The best things…

THE EFFECT, by Lucy Prebbles, I first saw in the original production at the National Theatre, London, in 2012. I have written about it. I, also, was fortunate to catch the ill fated Broadway production of ENRON (2010) also by Lucy Prebbles. Both these plays are challenging examinations in the theatre of very big issues. ENRON has been seen in Sydney at the enterprising New Theatre. The Sydney production of THE EFFECT has been sponsored by The Commonwealth Bank – one can ponder why they didn’t agree to sponsor the ENRON play, too – too big to fail! Both these plays…

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…