High Society, Hayes Theatre Co, Sydney, September 7; Anything Goes, Sydney Opera House, September 8 IN one giddy night of mayhem, pairs of lovers – former, would-be, should-be, desperately mismatched – ricochet around in the search for a safe harbour. Intoxicants are taken, identities are mistaken, the low-born mingle with the high-born, a man is very…
Three premieres
The Aliens, Old Fitz Theatre, August 27; La Traviata, Belvoir Downstairs, September 1; Bull, Old Fitzroy Theatre, September 3 AMERICAN playwright Annie Baker has been mentioned, many times, in the same breath as Chekov and it’s a comparison that has merit. Baker, who is only 34, probes beneath the surface of apparently ordinary and often…
‘They shall be themselves’
Playhouse, Sydney Opera House, August 21. THE Tempest starts in tumult and ends in calm. Prospero, ejected from his dukedom of Milan 12 years before, is going home. His daughter, Miranda, is to marry the heir to the throne of Naples, ending the enmity between two great houses. Ariel and Caliban, the light and dark…
Matilda the Musical and memories of childhood
Matilda the Musical, Lyric Theatre, Sydney I’M sorry. I make no apology for the following revelation because it’s relevant. I was the intellectual of the Kindergarten class at St Columba’s, Ballarat North. I could read before I started school and thus, when the teacher – not a sympathetic one, I fear – took us endlessly…
Sylvie Guillem: Life in Progress
Sydney Opera House, August 19. LET’S not talk in the past tense about Sylvie Guillem. She may be on her farewell tour but she is still one of the greatest of the greats. Until December, when she calls it quits, she is still a dancer and still a superstar. At 50 she leaves the stage…
Robert Curran attracts $US1 million gift for Louisville Ballet
IN his first year as artistic director of Louisville Ballet, in the US state of Kentucky, former Australian Ballet principal dancer Robert Curran has attracted a donation of $US1 million to the company. It is believed to be the largest gift received from an individual donor in the company’s 63-year history, says Louisville Ballet director…
Love and Information, twice
Minetta Lane Theatre, New York, February 9, 2014 Sydney Theatre Company, July 15, 2015 The script for Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information gives little away at first glance. There are many scenes and no stage directions. Characters are not named and only very occasionally is it clear that lines or actions must be assigned to…
On View: Live Portraits
Performance Space at Carriageworks, Sydney, July 17 HOW can we know the dancer from the dance, asked W.B. Yeats. It’s a question embedded in Sue Healey’s absorbing On View: Live Portraits, a piece that incorporates the moving image, live performance and, for 10 minutes at the beginning, the dancer as museum object. When the doors to…
On reading the draft guidelines for The National Program for Excellence in the Arts
I DO hope I’ve got this right. Senator George Brandis is appropriating about $100 million, give or take, from the Australia Council for the Arts so he can give it to applicants approved directly and personally by himself. It’s what the guidelines say, kind of. The language is not always as direct as one would…
The sweetest choice
CARRIAGEWORKS is Sydney’s other great secular cathedral. This vast late-19th century industrial space, originally built as railway workshops to make train carriages for the growing city, is less than a decade old as a centre for contemporary arts and doesn’t have the instant-recognition factor of the Sydney Opera House, but it, too, is awe-inspiring in…
deborah jones: FollowSpot 