Belvoir, Sydney, April 24. IT was all for the best, apparently, the practice of rounding up children and sending them as far away as possible to conditions of near slavery. Not being in any position to consent to the arrangement, the more than 3000 youngsters who came to Australia from the UK formed a second…
Author: Deborah
Don Quixote x 6
The Australian Ballet, six performances in March and April 2013 BALLET’S reliance on and reverence for its history is powerful in so many ways. In the Australian Ballet’s 2013 Melbourne and Sydney seasons of Don Quixote the women dancing Kitri were coached by former American Ballet Theatre principal Cynthia Harvey; the leading men prepared under…
Fury, Stories I Want to Tell You in Person
Fury Sydney Theatre Company, Wharf 1, April 19 JOANNA Murray-Smith recently spoke on radio of the seductive power of argument, of recalling the sound of her parents and their friends talking passionately long into the night. Those long-evaporated murmurs are the wellspring of Fury, Murray-Smith’s absorbing new play. Alice (Sarah Peirse) is a neuroscientist at…
Dance Better at Parties
Sydney Theatre Company, April 9 DAVE would appear to have come to the wrong place. The ugly suburban dance school with its poo-brown floor and unforgiving fluoros offers private lessons in the rumba, tango, paso doble and other glittering ballroom arts. You buy a block of 10, sign here for direct debit, initial the injury…
Robert Curran
In the first of an occasional conversation and discussion series, former Australian Ballet principal artist Robert Curran talks about his sometimes frustrating, not yet achieved but deeply considered and tenaciously sought transition from dancing to an artistic directorship ROBERT Curran gave his last performance with The Australian Ballet on November 26, 2011 – as Danilo…
Cinderella
Queensland Ballet, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, April 5 QUEENSLAND Ballet’s ambitious Cinderella has much to say about what new artistic director Li Cunxin wants for his company and a little something to say about Li himself. Li’s story is well known. He was plucked from deepest obscurity in rural China to be trained in ballet…
Ty King-Wall
The Australian Ballet has a new principal artist WHEN David McAllister walks onstage at the end of an Australian Ballet performance it usually means just one thing, and so it was the afternoon of April 6 in Sydney. McAllister named Ty King-Wall, 26, the AB’s newest principal artist after his performance as Basilio in Don…
Frankenstein
Ensemble Theatre, Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, April 3. FRANKENSTEIN is a name that despite one’s best efforts to resist brings forth mental images of freaks and bogeymen. Perhaps nothing quite as silly as a lurching giant with bolts through the neck, but something not quite human. Nick Dear’s over-weening scientist Victor Frankenstein is not this…
The Addams Family
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…
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…
