Category: Valerie Bader

Sydney Theatre Company (STC) and Colonial Trust First State Global Asset Management presents, CHILDREN OF THE SUN, by Maxim Gorky, in a new version by Andrew Upton, in the Drama Theatre, at the Sydney Opera House. 17 September – 18 October. Look. Dear Diary, I did not have a good time with this production of CHILDREN OF THE SUN, at the Drama Theatre. It seemed to me to be more a play adapted from a Feydeau classic, than a play by Gorky. I can’t decipher who is responsible, The Adaptor: Andrew Upton, or the Director, Kip Williams. The best things…

M.ROCK is a new play by Lachlan Philpott. Commissioned by the Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) and co-presented by the Sydney Theatre Company. Mr Philpott is, in my experience, the most interesting of the ‘new’ contemporary Australian writers. For those of us who have closely followed Mr Philpott’s work, M.ROCK, is a very surprising and pleasing change of content and tone, from his other recent major works: COLDER (2007), SILENT DISCO (2009) and TRUCK STOP (2012). COLDER is a fierce experience of grief for an unaccounted loss of a son, and the ruins endured by family and friends as his memory,…

  Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Theatre Company and Allens present AUSTRALIA DAY by Jonathan Biggins In the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. AUSTRALIA DAY by Jonathan Biggins is an amusing, ‘comic-strip’ sketch scenario, a “softly’ satirical comment on contemporary Aussie social and political mores that we, the audience, recognise as part of our daily lives, involving some classic, characteristic, Aussie types, whom we, also, recognise. Transfer your knowledge of the commedia dell’arte or the Moliere character ‘types’ to the Aussie milieu. The highly prejudiced but heart of gold irascible hard nut: Wally (Peter Kowitz); the smooth, handsome political operator with…

  WAYNE HARRISON’S CHEEP in association with Auspicious Arts projects and The Seymour Centre presents STAINLESS STEEL RAT by Ron Elisha in the York Theatre at The Seymour Centre. What a distinctly exciting frisson to go to the theatre to see a new Australian play about contemporary world events. To see a work that did not have its Australianess filtered through the adaptation of a “classic” play from world literature. Even more of a relief that it wasn’t our Russian friends that we were pillaging, once again. That STAINLESS STEEL RAT is not a complete success did not have too…