Capitol Theatre, Sydney, March 23 THE Addams Family is helpfully subtitled The Broadway Musical in case you had the misapprehension you were seeing a play based on the 1960s television series. If only that were so. Instead one is asked to set aside two and a half hours for a plot that would scarcely stretch…
Month: March 2013
Bombshells
Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, March 20 “I’M so fucking happy,” screams Theresa McTerry, bride-to-be, slamming down the bubbles. It won’t be the first time she says that. Protesting a little too much, perhaps? Theresa’s monologue is the fourth of six that make up Bombshells, Joanna Murray Smith’s cunningly named piece about women in a state of…
Memoirs of a Showgirl
Slide, Sydney, March 7 SHAY Stafford is beautiful of course. There’s not a lot of call for showgirls who aren’t well above average in the face and figure stakes. She’s smart and funny too – an example of how life’s bounty can be quite unfairly distributed. But she worked very hard to get where she…
Don Quixote, The Australian Ballet
Melbourne, March 16. With guest stars Natalia Osipova and Ivan Vasiliev IF you were looking for a well-balanced Don Quixote, the Australian Ballet’s opening night in Melbourne on March 15 was probably the go, as Eamonn Kelly’s excellent review in The Australian on March 18 indicated. The following night was when star-power ruled, with Russian…
6000 miles away
Choreography by William Forsythe, Mats Ek and Jiri Kylian. Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, March 8 MATS Ek’s Bye is the crowd-pleasing work in this rich, concentrated evening of dance but William Forsythe’s Rearray is where the real nourishment is. Forsythe and Sylvie Guillem go way back – nearly a quarter of a century –…
De Novo
Sydney Dance Company. Choreography by Rafael Bonachela, Alexander Ekman and Larissa McGowan. IF Alexander Ekman is true to his program note he won’t read this review, or any other. It’s a shame, because I’d like to let him know how much I enjoyed Cacti. Perhaps someone at Sydney Dance Company will pass the word on,…
February wrap
A quick look at what February brought in the theatre in Sydney, and beyond … AT this year’s Perth International Arts Festival I was able to see, in one evening, the festival’s biggest and smallest pieces of theatre – The Threepenny Opera from the Berliner Ensemble, weighing in at about three hours and filling His…
Driving Miss Daisy
Theatre Royal, Sydney, March 2 ALFRED Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy is a wisp of a play with matters of great substance at its heart. Boolie Werthan (Boyd Gaines) thinks his mother Daisy is no longer capable of driving safely and against her will hires Hoke Coleburn as her chauffeur. The year is 1948 and the…
The Kreutzer Sonata: all of a Twitter
ON February 22 The Australian published an interview with Barry Otto about his role in The Kreutzer Sonata, a State Theatre Company of South Australia production due to open the following week as part of the Adelaide Festival. It would be new STCSA artistic director Geordie Brookman’s first production in his new role. So, a…
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Belvoir, Sydney
Belvoir St Theatre, February 27 WHEN theatre practitioners talk about putting Australian voices on stage they tend to be talking about Australian plays and Australian content – what else would they mean? Well, at Sydney’s Belvoir theatre, artistic director Ralph Myers and resident director Simon Stone take it a step further by preferring to use…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 