Category: Sean O’Shea

Says Bernard Shaw in his Preface to the play of SAINT JOAN: Joan of Arc, a village girl from Vosges, was born about 1412; burnt for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery in 1431; rehabilitated after a fashion in 1456; designated Venerable in 1904; declared Blessed in 1908; and finally canonised in 1920. She is the most notable Warrior Saint in the Christian calendar, and the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages. Though a professed and most pious Catholic, and projector of a Crusade against the Husites, she was in fact one of the first Protestant martyrs. She…

DINNER, is a British play, written in 2002, by Moira Buffini. In the original and published text, which is different to what we see in this production, produced by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC), Paige (Caroline Brazier), a famous gourmet hostess, invites a group of middle class intellectuals (not aristocrats, as suggested in the program) to a, supposedly, celebratory dinner, for the successful publication of her husband’s, Lars (Sean O’Shea), philosophic how-to-live a happy life tome BEYOND BELIEF. Wynne (Rebecca Massey), a not famous painter, arrives without her husband Bob, a politician, who has just run off with one of…

  Ensemble Theatre present the World Premiere of THE RASPUTIN AFFAIR, by Kate Mulvany, at the Ensemble Theatre, Kirribilli. 1 April – 30 April. THE RASPUTIN AFFAIR is a new Australian play by Kate Mulvany. The play is concerned with the assassination, in December, 1916, of Rasputin, a Russian peasant, semi-literate monk and mystic, who exercised extraordinary power over the last of the ruling Romanoff family: Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra. There is a note in the program: Although this play is based on true people and events, some events and characters in this play have been fictionalised…

Sydney Theatre Company presents A FLEA IN HER EAR, by Georges Feydeau, in a new adaptation by Andrew Upton, in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, 31 October – 17 December. A FLEA IN HER EAR (La Puce a L’Oreille) was written by Georges Feydeau, in 1907. Feydeau is regarded as one of the greatest writers of the theatre form that we know as farce. Comedy is the hardest form of theatre to solve, I reckon, and farce is the most formidable. It requires a verbal precision that must be matched with an equally adept physical precision. It…

Bell Shakespeare present HAMLET by William Shakespeare, in the Playhouse, at the Sydney Opera House, 27 October – 5 December. Belvoir Theatre gave Sydney its last Hamlet in Toby Schmitz, under the Direction of Simon Stone – 2013. Bell has given many Hamlets, the biggest offer being that of Brendan Cowell with Marion Potts steering the task, in a lavish production in the much larger Drama Theatre of the Sydney Opera House (SOH) – 2008. This production is another Bell Shakespeare offer with Josh McConville, directed by Damien Ryan, this being the Director, Mr Ryan’s second offer to Sydney, having…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti Bell Shakespeare presents HENRY 4 adapted by John Bell from William Shakespeare’s KING HENRY IV: PART ONE and KING HENRY IV; PART TWO, at the Drama Theatre, in the Sydney Opera House. John Bell has adapted the two History plays, HENRY IV Parts One (1596-97) and Two (1597-98) into a three-hour ten-minute journey. These two plays were written after HENRY VI, Parts One ((1590-91), Two (1590-91) and Three (1590-91); RICHARD III (1592); RICHARD II (1595-96) but, before Henry V (1599). All part of the chronicles dealing with The War of the Roses. The two parts of…