Sydney Opera House, February 28 IN the guise of a sweet and playful romance, As You Like It drives its characters (and ourselves) to seek answers to life’s deepest questions. Who am I? What is my purpose? What is my rightful place? As the story begins the world is in disarray. A ruler has been…
Category: Theatre
Unfinished business
Belvoir, February 18 KILL the Messenger is as simple as theatre gets. There’s a bare space – designer Ralph Myers in particularly pared-back mode – and some projected photographs, five actors, a couple of props, 75 minutes and we’re done. The rigour, almost at the level of ruthlessness, is thrilling. Playwright Nakkiah Lui requires your…
The giants inside
Not I, Footfalls, Rockaby. Royal Court Theatre and Lisa Dwan, State Theatre Centre of WA, February 14. Mozart Dances, Mark Morris Dance Group, His Majesty’s Theatre, February 13. THERE were giants inside as well as outside during Perth’s first festival weekend. While Mark Morris and Mozart ruled with joie de vivre at His Majesty’s, Lisa…
In which I fail to stop my list at 10
THIS year I saw more than 200 performances and, over the past week or so, have written about the people, plays, operas, dance works and musicals that spoke to me most strongly. Now I cull the list to 14 – just because that’s how it turned out – and a supplementary, the last being something…
Naming names: looking back on 2014
I’VE avoided making neat lists of 10 of this and 10 of that in my survey of 2014, which is good when it comes to the individuals who made the deepest impression on me. I decided not to divide the names by art form or vocation. There are dancers, opera singers, actors, actresses, directors and…
Love and information: international theatre in 2014
TWO pieces of 2015 theatre programming in Melbourne would have interested me anyway, but having seen the shows in New York early this year makes them irresistible. Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information (Melbourne’s Malthouse, from June 12, Sydney Theatre Company from July 9) and Jonathan Tollins’s Buyer and Cellar (Melbourne Theatre Company, from October 30)…
A baker’s dozen: 2014 theatre in review
OF the more than 200 shows I saw last year, about a third were plays. Dance, opera, musical theatre and cabaret make up the rest. Unfortunately symphonic and chamber music featured very lightly. Can’t do everything, which is why my theatre viewing in Sydney had many gaps, although I don’t believe I missed anything that…
King and the king-maker
The Legend of King O’Malley, Reginald Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney, December 2 Rupert, Theatre Royal, Sydney, December 3 IT’S delicious to think that Federation-era politician King O’Malley and present-day media baron Rupert Murdoch could have met, and a shame I have no reason to think they did. They are endlessly fascinating and important characters in…
Current Sydney theatre
Blue/Orange, Ensemble, October 29; Emerald City, Griffin, November 10; A Christmas Carol, Belvoir, November 12; Daylight Saving, Eternity Playhouse, November 13; Cyrano de Bergerac, Sydney Theatre, November 18. WHY did quite a few commentators, myself included, feel we had to advertise our reservations about the prospect of A Christmas Carol? Or to liken ourselves to…
The drama of Patricia Highsmith
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, November 7 In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man WHEN Sydney Theatre Company artistic director Andrew Upton announced STC’s 2014 program in September last year,…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 