Bell Shakespeare, Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, March 5. “A SAD tale’s best for winter. I have one of sprites and goblins,” says the boy Mamillius, through whose eyes John Bell filters Shakespeare’s late, great fable. Mamillius’s bedroom, bathed in a fairy-world pastel light and hung with stars, is where everything will happen, a reflection of…
Category: Theatre
Noises Off
Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, February 27 MICHAEL Frayn’s Noises Off is not only exceptionally funny, but also – as Jonathan Biggins writes in his director’s note – has the darkest of undercurrents. A group of actors, some of them not entirely in their prime, have been cast in a production of a farce called…
Proof; Boys Like Me
Proof, Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, February 25 (matinee) Boys Like Me, Courtney Act, Sydney Theatre, February 25 DAVID Auburn’s Proof had a Sydney Theatre Company season in 2003 with George Ogilvie directing Jacqueline McKenzie and Barry Otto as the father and daughter maths whizzes who share a genius for numbers and potentially a similar fate. The…
Oedipus Schmoedipus
Belvoir, January 15 FOR each performance of the utterly baffling theatre work that is Oedipus Schmoedipus, two dozen volunteers are recruited to perform in the piece. As it turns out they are responsible for a good half of the action, so that was a pretty good wheeze on the part of creators Zoe Coombs Marr,…
The year ahead
And coming up in 2014 … LAST year it was easy to point to the events in dance one thought would be unmissable (not so very many) and theatre (vast amounts). Mostly performances and productions delivered pretty much what one thought they would and moments of transcendence were few, but I guess they always are….
2013: a retrospective
Here’s my take on the year’s high points. As many have noted before me, “best” is a useless word when applied to the cornucopia available in the arts. Here are the people and productions that most inspired me. “A SHORT show is a good show,” we all carol (me and my fellow critics) as we…
Goodnight, sweet prince
Hamlet, change of cast, Belvoir, Sydney, November 26 THEATRE critics don’t often revisit a production. They go to the opening, write, and move on. They must. Other plays, other companies relentlessly crowd the diary and then the season is over and the chance disappears. The critic has to make judgments swiftly, and very possibly on…
Waiting for Godot
Sydney Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre, November16 SYDNEY Theatre Company’s Waiting for Godot offers, above all, the grace of tenderness and the gift of generosity. There are few qualities more touching in any circumstances; in Godot they temper and illuminate one of the harshest and most unforgiving dramas of the 20th century. Life is envisioned as…
The Chocolate Frog and other plays
The Floating World, Griffin, Sydney, October 9; Hamlet, Belvoir, Sydney, October 16; The Chocolate Frog, Parramatta Correctional Centre, October 22; Minsk 2011: A Reply to Kathy Acker, Melbourne Festival, October 25 Hamlet: Denmark is a prison Rosencrantz: Then is the world one Hamlet: A goodly one; in which there are many confines wards and dungeons,…
Room of Regret, Life and Times: Episodes 1-4
Room of Regret, Theatre Works, St Kilda, October 27 Life and Times: Episodes 1-4, Melbourne Arts Centre, October 26 THE Rabble’s Room of Regret could have been expressly ordered by the Melbourne Festival to illustrate the essential unknowability of the critical process. As part of the festival’s investigation into the art of the critic I…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 