Category: Simon Phillips

  Alfred Hitchcock had decided he needed a change of style and, particularly, after the twisted Freudian themes and motifs of his then disparaged VERTIGO – released in 1958 (it, belatedly has become  regarded as a Hitchcockian Masterpiece) – he began a treatment of THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, based on a novel by Hammond Innes with screenwriter Ernest Lehman. It didn’t work out. They quit on it. Being under contract they had to produce something for M.G.M. , so the Cold War suspense thriller, romantic-comedy, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, gradually crystallised. It seems that Hitchcock had collected in his…

THE REAL THING, is a play by Tom Stoppard, from the approximate middle period of his output – 1982. Prior to this it was the intellectual brilliance of his word play and juggling of various viewpoints that gave his work the effervescence of the best cold champagne that money could buy. Exhilarating nights in the theatre that made one feel smarter and wittier than one had suspected, known, of oneself ever being: ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD (1968); JUMPERS (1972); TRAVESTIES (1976). THE REAL THING, had all the wit as usual, but at its centre it had, as well, a…

MICHAEL CASSEL GROUP and NULLARBOR PRODUCTIONS in association with MGM STAGE present PRISCILLA Queen of the Desert. Book by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott, based on the latent Image/Specific Films, at the Capitol Theatre, Haymarket, Sydney. PRISCILLA – Queen of the Desert – The Musical is now at the Capitol Theatre on a 10th Anniversary return run – last time at the Lyric Theatre. Since that beginning says Simon Phillips, the Director: Our own bus has done a macrocosmic version of the road trip. PRISCILLA is the first Australian musical to conquer the two biggest showbiz smokes, Broadway and the…

Photo by Lisa Tomasetti Sydney Theatre Company presents A Sydney Theatre Company and Global Creatures Production, MURIEL’S WEDDING – The Musical. Book by PJ Hogan. Music and Lyrics by Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall. Based on the Motion Picture by PJ Hogan, with songs by Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson, originally written for ABBA. At the Roslyn Packer Theatre, Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay. Well, here it is, a new Australian musical. It is based on the film of MURIEL’S WEDDING of 1994, an iconic, quirky, favourite of the nation. At its centre is a misfit, Muriel, who embarks…

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…

Ambassador Theatre Group Asia Pacific and Red Live present, THE BEAST, by Eddie Perfect, in the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House, 29 July – 21 August. THE BEAST, written by Eddie Perfect, began as a project at the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2013 and has now been taken up by the Ambassador Theatre Group on a commercial run – a rarity in Australia, indeed – which is, at the moment, playing in the Drama Theatre, in the Sydney Opera House. This is a new production and new casting from the original. The publicity blurb on the web-site tells…