Category: Sydney Opera House

SIX, is a contemporary musical, having its origin as part of the Edinburgh Festival in 2017. Taken up, it was further developed and is now represented by seven companies throughout the world, including a Broadway production opening in 2020. SIX is a musical phenomenon. SIX is the ‘herstory’ of the six wives of Henry VIII. It has been conceived through the influential contemporary lens of womens’ empowerment, catapulted by the energy of the #metoo stance. It is a brilliant, sassy, sexy, vital deconstruction of history – amusing cheeky and out there. Henry WHO? This is the story of Katherine of…

GRAND FINALE is the third work presented by the Sydney Opera House of the Hofesh Shechter Company: a dance company based in the United Kingdom, with an international cast of nine dancers and five musicians from France,Taiwan, United Kingdom, Poland, Belgium, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Scotland, led by Hofesh Shechter, an Israeli whose origin/training was with the Batsheva Dance Company in Tel Aviv. They are now resident at Brighton Dome and Shechter is an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells. In 2010 he created POLITICAL MOTHER, and in 2014, SUN (both seen in Sydney). Olivia Ansell, Sydney Opera House’s Head…

SONGS FOR NOBODIES is a work written by Joanna Murray-Smith. This performance is a revival production, it having been seen first some 10 years ago. Five nobodies tell us of their individual brush with fame, interactions with five extraordinary divas: Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Maria Callas. All ten figures appearing in this 90-minute show are inhabited by Bernadette Robinson, she dressed in a simple black skirt and tailored black jacket of an indeterminate period fashion with a coiffured hairstyle that, similarly, is of an undefined time, that together radiate a visual cohesion to the setting,…

A large screen at the back of the Concert Hall stage is covered with a projected photograph of Ms Gadsby and her dog Douglas (a large poodle). It is Douglas that has inspired this new show, tells Ms Gadsby – well, new to Sydney for it has already had a showing in Adelaide in March, then Melbourne and has toured to some cities in the USA. In 2018 Ms Gadsby became an internet star with the release of a performance of NANETTE on NETFLIX, which has received an international critic rating of 100% and has been acclaimed as ‘ground breaking’.…

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…

WEST SIDE STORY debuted in 1957 on Broadway. Four genius artists somehow subdued their egos to collaborate as an Ensemble to produce one of the great works in the Musical Theatre canon: Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins. A motion picture version was made and arrived in 1961 winning 10 Academy Awards – it created a permanent number of indelible moments. (please read my 2010 review of another production of WEST SIDE STORY*** to get my grasp of this work’s greatness). This production led by American Choreographer/Director, Joey McKneely is the second version of this iconic work…