Obviously we’re not precisely at the opera. If so, the doors would have been shut against all-comers at the scheduled start time and there wouldn’t be all these people standing around in the auditorium drinking and chatting. And no one telling them to shut up and sit down. So far, so fabulous, as are the…
Category: Theatre
The year in review: 2024
It’s been a few years since I’ve done a year’s-best list. Everyone loves a list, including me, and it’s fun to see what others found memorable. But while I’m always happy to share my opinions about live performance it’s a bit of a mug’s game to say this thing was “better” than that thing when…
SILENCE. Karul Projects, Sydney Opera House, May 8, 2024
Thomas E.S. Kelly’s SILENCE has been well travelled since its premiere at the Brisbane Festival in 2020. That’s a measure of how well it’s been received, which is excellent, and the enduring nature of its theme, which is not so good. SILENCE comes out swinging at the fact that Australia’s First Nations people are still waiting for a…
Jungle Book Reimagined. Akram Khan Company, Perth Festival, February 10, 2024
In Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book (1894) the law of the jungle is the furthest thing from anarchy. Social structures built by the animals are adhered to without fail. They give an often violent world some kind of order. Akram Khan’s reimagining and updating is rooted in chaos. We are in a future – 2029…
Salamander, Brisbane Festival, September 2, 2023
In 2019 Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina, then new in her role, travelled the substantial width of Australia to attend the Perth Festival, as you do. There she met British chorographer and director Maxine Doyle, who was in Perth to work on a dance piece called Sunset with local choreographic centre STRUT Dance. And, as you…
The Mousetrap, Theatre Royal, Sydney, October 9, 2022
Governments rise and fall. Children grow up to be mothers and then grandmothers. A man steps on the moon. Evolution creates a new version of humankind, the digital native. And serenely The Mousetrap goes on, a resolutely unchanging oasis of certainty in an unpredictable world. It’s a phenomenon that, if not for the COVID-19 pandemic, would have been…
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Adapted and directed by Kip Williams. Roslyn Packer Theatre, Sydney, August 10 and September 7. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case starts not with Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde but with Jekyll’s close friend, the lawyer Gabriel Utterson. Utterson is a man of austere habits. He mortifies his flesh while being tolerant of more spirited acquaintances…
Adelaide Festival: Split and Memorial
Split, Lucy Guerin Inc. AC Main Arts Theatre, Adelaide. March 3. Memorial, Brink Productions, Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide, March 3. The opening weekend of this year’s Adelaide Festival, the second under the co-artistic directorship of Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, had brilliance and breadth in equal measure. The marquee work was Australian composer Brett Dean’s opera…
SHIT, by Patricia Cornelius
A Dee & Cornelius/Milke Production. Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney, July 20 Patricia Cornelius gets right to the point, as the titles of recent plays attest. Savages (2013) is the one about men off the leash, and how a toxic mix of testosterone, grievances real and perceived, booze and group dynamics plays out on a…
Adelaide Festival opening weekend
Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy, who have signed on as joint artistic directors for three Adelaide festivals (this year, 2018 and 2019), set the bar high on their first opening weekend and floated over it with ease. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it looked easy. It can’t be underestimated how much work went…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 