Category: Sydney Opera House

Sydney Theatre Company and Qantas present LOOT by Joe Orton at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. LOOT by Joe Orton was written and premiered in 1966. It, followed the success of ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE on the West End stage, the year before. Orton with LOOT “ extended the boundaries of farce by taking it out of the bedroom and into the funeral parlour: this is Feydeau with fangs or Ben Travers rewritten by a socialist anarchist. The action hinges on stolen bank loot being stashed in a coffin while the displaced corpse (of one of the robbers mothers) is…

  Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) present Tour Six: VIENNESE SERENADE with Benjamin Schmid in the Concert Hall, the  Sydney Opera House. Benjamin Schmid acting as Guest Director & Lead Violinist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra presented a delightful concert, mostly focused on the Viennese influence on the music experience. What is nearly always joyful about the guest artists that the ACO invite to work with them, is the calibre and musical love that these artists bring to their work. What was most affecting for me was to see this relatively, modest looking artist appear with the orchestra, (firstly in a…

Sydney Opera House presents SPRING DANCE 2011, DV8-Physical Theatre in CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS ? at the Drama Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS ? is the new work from DV8 , a physical theatre company led by Lloyd Newson. “The motivation behind the making of CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS? arose during the research of DV8’s last work TO BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU  (Seen at the Adelaide Arts Festival -2008), a verbatim dance production about religious attitudes towards homosexuality. When we interviewed gay Muslims many spoke about the appalling treatment they received, particularly…

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester in Association with Andrew KAY and Liza MCLEAN presents HAUNTED by Edna O’Brien in the Playhouse Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. Edna O’Brien is an esteemed novelist who also writes for the theatre. A few years ago her play VIRGINIA with Ruth Cracknell and Jennifer Hagan (on the life and writings of Virginia Woolf) had a great success around Australia. HAUNTED is a ‘small’ gem of a play, redolent with language, images and observations of life of some ordinary people, who, in her hands become, momentarily, extraordinary. “With my plays … I imagine a place…

BELL SHAKESPEARE presents MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING by William Shakespeare at the Drama Theatre, in the Sydney Opera House. A set design (Stephen Curtis) sits in the space in a dominating fashion. A giant fresco wall of romantic images of giant mythical figures, the impact luscious at first glance, but on closer study reveals signs of wasting on the edges and hasty repair and ‘gutting’ by a large folding door, centrally. Pieces of odd and ruined furniture spread across the room – a piano of ruined tones and wear, included. There is a sense of a time when the wealth…

    Bell Shakespeare presents TWELFTH NIGHT by William Shakespeare in the Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House. TWELFTH NIGHT is the last of Shakespeare’s comedies and it precedes the appearance of HAMLET. In an essay by Stanley Wells on John Barton’s production of TWELFTH NIGHT – my first remembered experience of this play, a magical one at the old Theatre Royal, in tandem with Trevor Nunn’s THE WINTER’S TALE starring Judi Dench as Viola and Hermione/Perdita- (Manchester University press,1976): “HAMLET is one of the most controversial of Shakespeare’s plays. It has been endlessly discussed, and poses major interpretative problems.…