Category: Sydney Theatre Company

Ruminations: THE SEAGULL, UNCLE VANYA, THREE SISTERS and THE CHERRY ORCHARD, the four great plays of Anton Chekhov. THREE SISTERS is my favourite and the greatest in my estimation. UNCLE VANYA is the smaller gem and my next favoured. Both great, mostly, differing only, in the scale of their scenarios. What makes the works of Chekhov a favourite exploration for actors and audiences (especially, if you have the opportunity to see the works regularly, as in Europe, where they are a staple of the theatre ‘diet’) is the endless possibility of interpretation. The fine ambiguity of the Chekhovian text (I…

  Sydney Theatre Company and UBS Investment Bank present TRUE WEST by Sam Shepard at Wharf 1. First, my prejudices: Sam Shepard is one of three of the great living American playwrights, in my estimation. Edward Albee the greatest and David Mamet, the other member of the trinity. TRUE WEST(198O) by Sam Shepard follows the family sagas of CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS (1976) and the Pulitzer prize winning BURIED CHILD (1979). It has been regarded as the final episode in a ‘family’ trilogy, although A LIE OF THE MIND (1987) seems, to me, a clincher to the Shepard family…

    SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY presents Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. I saw OUR TOWN in the highly celebrated off-Broadway production in New York earlier this year directed by David Cromer (closed September 12th after 566 performances – a record, at the 199 seat Barrow Street Theatre). A few years ago I saw a production by Lee Lewis at the NEW THEATRE . It has been a part of my consciousness from my early youth. So, sitting in the Drama Theatre the other night I wondered what would my experience be. The scale of…

    Sydney Theatre Company, Malthouse Melbourne and Thin Ice present THE TRIAL adapted by Louise Fox, from the novel by Franz Kafka, at the Sydney Theatre Company at the Wharf 1. THE TRIAL is the third Kafka based theatre experience that the Sydney Theatre Company has presented to us in the last eighteen months : KAFKA’S MONKEY and METAMORPHOSIS being the other two. THE TRIAL adapted by Louise Fox, from the novel by Franz Kafka is a ThinIce, Malthouse Melbourne and Sydney Theatre Company Commission. The last time I met the work of Louise Fox was the commission by…

Sydney Theatre Company and Australian Theatre for Young People (atyp) present TUSK TUSK by Polly Stenham at Wharf 1. TUSK TUSK (2009) is the second play by Polly Stenham and like her first, THAT FACE, was presented at the Royal Court Theatre. THAT FACE, was presented earlier in the year at Belvoir St. Theatre. The writing in TUSK TUSK is not as strong or as interesting. In fact it is mostly a re-working of the preoccupations of the first play. The story of a family, in this case, three young children, instead of two, coping with an unstable mother, and…

    Sydney Theatre Company and The Sydney Morning Herald present AUGUST:OSAGE COUNTY by Tracy Letts at the Sydney Theatre. “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” thus begins Leo Tolstoy’s ANNA KARENINA, and he ought to have known! AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY has us meet the Weston family in a large rambling country house outside Pawhusta, Oklahoma, sixty miles north-west of Tulsa, and boy, are they unhappy! Over three and a half hours we watch the unique unhappiness of this family unravel in front of us. It sure is a roller coaster…