Category: Stables Theatre

GRIFFIN THEATRE COMPANY present RANTERS THEATRE production of HOLIDAY by Raimondo Cortese at THE SBW STABLES THEATRE.   When we climb up to the performance space at the SBW Stables you find that the whole of the interior has been painted white. (Set design: Anna Trelogan) Stage floor and walls, auditorium walls and even the further steps into the seating banks. The whiteness is quite a visual shock. Instead of the usual masking black paint there is the nakedness of the white that emphasises all the ugly blemishes of every surface. The production has been showing for several weeks, when…

    Bambina Borracha and Griffin Stablemates present a World premiere: HAMMERHEAD (IS DEAD) at the SBW Stables Theatre. Hammerhead has been hit in the head by his sister and the play begins with her calling for help. “8.00 – the accident. 8.01 – the play begins. ‘Hammerhead’ is dying. 9.30-the play ends, ‘Hammerhead’ dies.” “The time in between includes some sex with dreamboat Denny, adventures on the high seas with Mindy, and conversations in a seaside shack with Jones.” This is a new play by young playwright Nick Coyle. Although this is the first play of his that I…

We have three Australians, one with a spiritual vocation, one with a scientific vocation and one a bewildered young man who likes adventures and joins the army. Each of them follow their instincts, and their fates unravel. Each are placed in a crucible with the intense “bunsen burner of life under them”, and each are melted down to their core. Each in their ravelling life thread are taken to places that stretch them into enduring feats that only the pure core of humanity can confront and survive. These ordinary people become true heroes of the modern international world. “This is…

The Arabian Nights that I know from my childhood memories and also from my occasional foray into the ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS (Five volumes long) that I have at home, begins with a betrayed husband, a cuckold, the King Shahrayar who in vengeful grief has his first wife beheaded, and then declares that from now on he would marry for one night only and the next morning would order the Vizier to have the Headsman cut off his new wife’s head. For a thousand nights he married and the next day each of the thousand wives would perish. Until…

On the coldest night in Sydney this winter, so far, with rain sprinkling around me, after almost two weeks of every night out at some theatre event, I had an uninspiring dinner grabbed between work and the theatre and then walked to the SBW Stables Theatre, bought my ticket and then climbed the stairs into that relatively uncomfortable space. I had recently written a series of reviews which were never entirely happy about what I had experienced. Mostly, lately, had begun to be irritated about Directors (both young and mature) conceptualising a production of a play and relatively obliterating the…

When we enter the space thirteen actors are standing in a flat straight line across the widest part of the Griffin stage. The walls are black. The floor is black. There are some bricks full and whole, strewn across the stage. Later are revealed a few precast plastic chairs with metal legs. The people on stage are cheaply dressed. The clothes of the “working poor” (Maybe Target or K Mart).The lights dim down in the auditorium and a projected slide appears on two walls. “THE AIDS GENOCIDE. …THE PRESCRIPTION” Later another projection for another scene says “A CHILD SOLDIER” and…