Category: Simon Phillips

ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD is one of those famous plays by a now famous writer, Tom Stoppard, that every young, university actor wants to be in, or do a scene from. In the early nineteen sixties, having the idea that the King of England to whom Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, in Shakespeare’s HAMLET, were dispatched, was probably King Lear, Tom Stoppard wrote, whilst working in West Berlin, with several other writers on a Ford Foundation Award (as “cultural window dressing” for the allies!) a one-act comedy in verse called tentatively, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN MEET KING LEAR. A seed had been…

  Dainty Group in association with Team Edna and the Barry Humphries conglomerate, (a wholly owned subsidiary of Edna Care Switzerland) presents EAT PRAY LAUGH! – a meditation of loss, gender and ethnicity by Dr Barry Humphries AC CBE. BARRY HUMPHRIES’ FAREWELL TOUR, at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney. I came to Barry Humphries’ work very late (I don’t mean to this actual performance late, from experience of other shows, I would never dare). EAT PRAY LAUGH! is the fourth or fifth show I have attended. I am a fan. My first time, I remember, was at the State Theatre. I…

Photo by Brian Geach Sharleen Cooper Cohen, John Frost, Martin L. Cohen M. D., Howard Hirsch, Fiona Horman, David Ian, David Mirvish, Power Arts, Seol and Company, Chun-Soo Shin, Judy Stewart, and Michael Watt present AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN – The Musical, in association with Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Theatre Ventures, based on the movie written by Douglas Day Stewart at the Sydney Lyric Star Theatre. AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN – The Musical, was given its World Premiere Performance at the Lyric Star Theatre the 18th May, 2012. Book by Douglas Day Stewart and Sharleen Cooper Cohen.…

  Melbourne Theatre Company presents RICHARD III by William Shakespeare at the Sumner Theatre, Melbourne. This is my third meeting with the Duke of Gloucester- Richard III in the last couple of years. Firstly, the extraordinary one hour ‘reduction’ created by Pamela Rabe and Benedict Andrews, to serve that Director’s particular agenda for his vision of the great cycle of the historic rivalry between the Houses of York and Lancaster in the Sydney Theatre Company’s THE WAR OF THE ROSES, based on Shakespeare’s eight plays, where The Duke was played as a petulant brat- “a monstrous clown” cavorting in a…

Opening in Melbourne in late February, Tom Stoppard’s ROCK AND ROLL, opened at the Sydney Theatre April 14th. It is sad to realise that this is the first new play by Stoppard that Australian audiences have seen since ARCADIA some 13 or 15 years ago. This is what? The result of the Impoverishment of the Arts in Australia? Impoverishment of Financial Support or Intellectual Thought ,or Artistic Vision? I hope it was the first. We recently had Mr Stoppard in Sydney to give a talk. It was a full house with an eager audience. How embarrassing that we have not…